clive's dominion

RIP Dimebag Darryl...

clive — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Dimebag Darryl was killed on the 8th December 2004.

He always seemed a very cool guy and (less importantly than that) he was an unbelievable guitarist who contributed a lot of music to the world that I love very much. This makes me very sad.

I am a scribbler...

clive — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Since i don't feel i have much to say these days, I thought i'd try drawing. This is Unsuccessfully coping in honour of a weekend during which I unsuccessfully coped.

More is more.

RIP Hunter S Thompson...

clive — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Damn... another one of these, then. As of last night (Sunday 20 February 2005) we live in a world without Hunter S. Thompson. Famous for writing, Gonzo Journalism and making Ozzy Osbourne look like a clean living man.

Apparantly the cause is a self inflicted gunshot wound, which is a great great pity. But still, very sad.

Moving a little to the right...

clive — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

As you may or may not be aware, the figure at Christ's right hand in The Last Supper looks quite a lot like a woman. Some (cough, Dan Brown, cough) believe that Da Vinci actually intended this figure to be Mary Magdalena. If you've never bothered before, take a look. Whoa, huh?

But fear not, for i have no interest in discussing Mr Brown's tale of charming symbologists and the strikingly beautiful cryptographers they bump into here. My actual interest here is far far more shallow. As you may or may not know, Black Sabbath's The Last Supper DVD's cover artwork consists of Da Vinci's painting with the band members' faces quite skillfully superimposed over the disciples. Yes, it came out way before the book. But seeing as its a moderately controversial topic, i got to wondering which of the four got there head slapped onto the Magdalen. Of course, the answer is no surprise.

Clive loves Alien Loves Predator...

clive — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

You should already know exactly what Alien Loves Predator is. That is because it is beautiful and so randomly stupid that its brilliant. But my added motivation for posting this now is because Bernie Hou recently incorporated Black Sabbath's Iron Man into this strip. Sterling.

Gentlemen, bring out the leather...

clive — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Judas Priest are back with their first Rob Halford endowed album since 1990's Painkiller. Its called Angel Of Retribution and Kerrang! says its good, 5K's good. Its been a long time since I put much stock in the mighty word of Kerrang!, but if they're saying this is possibly Priest's best album ever, that has to be a good sign. Can't wait to get this.

UPDATE: Got the album and its excellent (provided you're into this type of thing). Everything one would hope for and more... great songs with a bit more variety than you would have any right to expect and of course, the screaming and brittle duel guitar solos. I really couldn't be bothered to do a song-by-song breakdown thing, but its all great. Also, a very nice production job from Roy Z. (Roy Z produced Halford's later solo albums after coming to metal via the solo career of Maiden's Bruce Dickinson as guitarist/co-songwriter/producer... Dickinson's Chemical Wedding is particularly good evidence of Z's talent in all these areas). Unexpectedly, the album also comes with a cool DVD with a documentary (in the most minimal sense of the term) on Priest's reunion and a few live tracks (which are fantastic... they're even making the naff power ballad Touch Of Evil sound good these days).

We could be heroes, just for one day...

clive — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The general idea of Anton LeVay (1930-1997) has tickled me for a while now. Not because i feel for his teachings and not because i'd like to give the impression that i'm an evil mofo or any rubbish like that. It was just that here was this guy who always seemed so much more charming, eloquent and intelligent than his detractors, despite them quite extravagantly making it clear that they were operation from a platform of unquestionable superiority. So, i've always liked Levay's image of being reasonably decent and quite an accomplished chap. This article compiled with the help of LeVay's daughter, however, breaks that image to a great extent. (note: link may be considered NSFW due to its spicy URL)

Really, if you do choose to believe this article, it seems that everything LeVay claimed was pretty much a fabrication. Fair enough, Levay's teachings encourage untruthfulness and a certain degree of dishonesty, but the article in question suggests that he freely rewrote his entire personal history. Which isn't necessarily a problem, except that the sheer extent of LeVay's claims seem to suggest a definite dissatifaction with who and what he really was. Which just seems a little sad really. If you choose to believe the article, the falsifications are elaborate and quite comprehensive: starting with his name; his alleged Gypsey heritage; being the youngest player ever in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra (which apparently never even existed); running away and joining the circus; his supposed relationship with Marilyn Monroe; being a San Francisco Police photographer; studying criminology at San Francisco City College; his claims concerning the history of his "Black House"; being the official city organist for San Francisco; the reason he originally shaved his head. And the list goes on and on. And on.

In case you're wondering, i have neither the time nor the inclination to actually research the validity of all these claims and counter-claims myself. Even if i did i wouldn't know where to start. But if the article's claims are true (and given the nature and variety of Levay's claims this seems plausible) it makes me feel more than a little sad that anybody would feel the need to bolster their image to this kind of extent. Just a note: while the article is sufficiently referenced to look authentic, it has certainly been made known in the past that Levay's daughter has an interest in soiling her father's reputation and image. Also note that the site hosting the article isn't affiliated with Levay's religious body, despite having the same name.

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new Queen...

clive — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

I learned to love music through Queen. And even though i don't listen to their music that much anymore, it still is all special stuff to me. For this sort of reason, i've deliberately ignored most of the band's efforts since Freddie Mercury's death. And they have been bizarrely prolific in that time. A lot of Queen-related stuff has been released since Mercury's passing in '91, whether it be compilations, collaborations, solo projects, etc.

But, i eventually paused to reflect when i saw that their 46664 performance was to be televised. I saw the advert for this show and it dawned on me... here was one of my favourite bands ever... or at least some incarnation of it... playing a show right here in my backyard. And i hadn't even really noticed.

But i pledged to watch the televised version at least, not quite knowing what to expect. Honestly, watching the performance left me more than a little cold. It just seemed wrong, and not just for the lack of Freddie. For one thing, referring to 'Queen' seems somewhat of a stretch. Since John Deacon has retired from touring, 'Queen' now implies Brian May and Roger Taylor - 2 people. What makes this a bit more apparent is that the band now operates as a 6 piece, having acquired a keyboardist and rythym guitarist... so that'd mean that the bona fide Queen members are outnumbered 2 to 1 onstage. (put more directly, would you feel inclined to refer to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr performing Ticket To Ride with some session musicians as The Beatles?)

Further uneasiness lies with Paul Rodgers (Free, etc). Lets say he's a less than obvious choice. The man has an unbelievably powerful voice, but whereas Freddie had operatic leanings Rodgers has bluesy rock leanings. And he has the (much hated by me) habit of trailing off most lines of lyrics with variations of "yeeeeeeah, yeah yeah". That aside, he is well suited to the rocking tunes ala Tie Your Mother Down. On the 80's pop tunes like A Kind Of Magic on the other hand, his voice seems at war with the original vibe of the song (not that his vocal range is a problem, though). Also, Freddie Mercury was the walking talking personification of flamboyance and charisma, a performer virtually without equal. Without him, any other incarnation of Queen can very easily end up looking like little more than an exceptionally good covers band. Which sounds harsher than I mean it to.

Having said all that, though, i do feel bad being so relentlessly negative on the topic. While negativity is definitely what i felt at the time, i've since read the band's feelings on this tour, and i've warmed somewhat to the idea. I'm still not entirely comfortable with the idea, but the band is clearly very excited about this tour and the oppurtunity to perform again and this also seems to be what a large portion of their fan base really really want. Also, I do think its cool that they have someone singing who is not only independently famous, but also of a similar age to the rest of them and with a little legend status. And Brian May totally rocks, so i'm glad people will be able to hear the guy do what he does live again.

The absence of a place to be...

clive — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

argh, those sharp kicks to the groin are just there to keep one alert aren't they... should have known no good would come from being linked off of www.jeanpant.com.

An ode to Pro Wrestling...

clive — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0200

There are many reasons to hate Pro Wrestling. After all, Pro Wrestling does for television what mixing a salt and iodine milkshake in an open wound does for the general human sense of well being. Rather than take random stabs at the sport (tee hee), however, i'd like to draw attention to a oft re-occuring dramatic moment in the squared ring of Pro Wrestling.

I don't know the technical jargon for describing this, so i'll describe it as best i can, using doing words and words that describe other words and such. Okay, so you have your 2 wrestler guys. Somewhere along the line, in a grand display of sportsmanship, one of the wrestlers (wrestler A) manouvers to the point that he can hurl himself into the ropes at the one end of the ring, build up monumental energy and use the tremendous spring action of the ropes to catapult himself across the ring like a man possesed, juggernauting into his opponent (wrestler B) like a Volvo hitting a hotdog stand. Stirring stuff. Quite understandably, wrestler B is physically and emotionally wrecked. He's on his knees. Dazed. Not in a condition fit to flip a McD's patti. But dammit, he's a fighter. So he starts to get up against all odds. Unfortunately, wrestler B must not own a television set, since if he did he would have seen this particular move unfolding enough times to know that wrestler A went hurtling like a stray weapon of mass destruction across George W Bush's imagination all the way to the other end of the ring, where he was able to once again throw himself into the ropes, flinging himself straight back again. Alas, wrestler A strikes wrestler B, and as one might expect, wrestler B is well and truly ground into hamburger now. His will to live has been pummeled from him by wrestler A's storming elbow and forearm. The man drops again to his knees, head hanging, sweat running into his eyes.

And the match looks pretty much wrapped up. Its all just a formality now, really. Wrestler A has catapulted himself across the ring one last time. Considering wrestler B's apparent current condition he intends to give him one more bodily ramming, and then have him buried right alongside Patrick Swayze's career. But wait. Ooh, what's this then? One can only presume that wrestler B then has one of those inspirational moments like at the end of Jean Claude Van Damme movies, when our hero has been mercilessly beaten into a seething pulp, bleeding and oozing and gasping for breath and quite possibly blind from sheer agony... only to be instantly adrenalised by a fit of rage at the sight of his love interest being pestered by an abnormally persistent butterfly. Wrestler B defiantly arises, his insides a soup of blood and guts and organs, all grinding against each other with deep displease. Drawing from hitherto unimagined wells of inner strength he raises his arm and whips Wrestler A in the neck as he comes hurtling past. Lo! For wrestler A was moving at such an inhuman speed that stopping himself at this point was not even an option. The crowd gasps in awe, knowing that they have witnessed the unimaginable unfolding before their eyes.

I *do* have fond youthful memories of watching local wrestling on TV with my mother though... back in the early 80's, when guys like Jan Wilkens and Blou Tornado were big... look at me, i'm as old as Charlton Heston.

An ode to jeanpant...

clive — Fri, 1 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Having mustered up the kind of hype normally reserved for Nobel Prize winners and Olympic athletes, the jeanpant crew has finally shifted their attention away from Xena Warrior Princess re-runs and cheap local lager drinks long enough to update their site. I'd be a no good worthless liar if I said it was anything special, but you might as well take a look.

New Bruce Dickinson album...

clive — Fri, 1 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Bruce Dickinson issued a press release indicating that he'll be releasing a new solo album, entitled Tyranny of Souls on 23rd May 2005. He'll be working with Roy Z again and it seems that the tone will be similar to that of The Chemical Wedding.

This is about as good as the good news can get as far as i'm concerned. I was just mentioning Roy Z and Dickinson in my post about the new Priest album, not even realising that a new Dickinson album was in the pipeline. Needless to say, I cannot wait.

RIP John Paul II...

clive — Thu, 7 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Pope (born Karol Joseph Wojtyla) has passed on, a good few days ago in fact. This is neither a mourning post, nor is it a Pope bashing post. This is simply a huge event that i feel basically compelled to comment on.

So, this is big, eh? Firstly because a major world figure has passed away, but almost more importantly, because another one is about to take his place. Pope John Paul II kept a substantially lower profile during his last years, but in his prime he was a a very active world figure. A guy who took pro-active steps to make good things happen in the world. The most prominent example of which would probably be his being instrumental in ending Communism in his home country of Poland. Okay, i'm not going to claim to have known much about that before the flood of news reports and mini biography things that have been televised since his death, but that's still pretty impressive. Of course, there's also that other side of the coin. That being John Paul II's staunch conservative beliefs about womans' rights within the church, and contraceptives primarily. Which could be said to pollute his image as human rights proponent of bigger-than-Bono proportions. I've seen a good few of the Catholic higher ups dodging interviewers' questions on those issues over the last few days.

And therein lies the point i'm getting to so poorly. Another man is going to be taking over this position shortly. What will he do about these issues? Will he do anything? After all, John Paul II may have been a stodgey, conservative old guy, but he *was* correct according to the dictates of Catholicism. Sure, I utterly disagree with him on these and other points, but I can appreciate that he had parameters in which his decisions were made. Is a new Pope going to come along with a "oops, are we still promoting those old out-dated ideas... sorry 'bout that folks" song and dance... or will he be gradually modernising the Church's outlook... will he maintain things just as they are... or will he pretty much do nothing at all? Because he could. There's no reason to assume that all popes must be as publicly and politically active as Pope John Paul II was (because despite my negative comments i don't want to dowplay the immense good he achieved). Imagine the sheer waste of potential if some lazy wanker got voted in who didn't care about improving the world at all? Fair enough, that probably won't happen... but this is a guy who's going to lead an international community of reportedly 1 billion Catholics. Just feel the walls of your brains implode as that number schwooshes around in there.

Anyway, its good for these things to have some sort of point, so here it is. While i dont really believe in the idea of having a Pope, we are going to have one anyway, so i hope its going to be a decent guy with a good heart who'll do the best he can to just make things better in as many places as he can.

Crappy drawings #1: Hetfield...

clive — Thu, 7 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

This is meant to be a sketch of Load-era James Hetfield... from the Load booklet in fact. Didn't quite nail it, but it gives me an oppurtunity to comment on the ups and downs of being a Metallica fan, so here it is.

Anyway, yes, that was a bizzare-ish time to be a Metallica fan. Their previous album (fondly referred to as Metallica Black, you may have heard of it) was released in 91. I was in Std 6 then. By the time Load was released (end of '95) I had just finished high school. That was a long wait and Metallica seemed to fill those years with endless touring, beer swillin' and James Hetfield shooting at stuff in his back yard. During that time, all indications were that the follow-up to Black would sound fairly similar to that album.

And then Load came along... Metallica suddenly sounded different, looked different, acted different and (gasp) they cut their hair. A band whose greatest fashion extravagance prior to this point had been a daliance with wearing matching dark shades had suddenly presented the world with several promotional photos of the members in drag. "Drag" as in womens' clothing. Lars Ulrich in lipstick and ear rings and the sounds of my Doc Martens spontaniously combusting in the cupboard. Soundwise, it was less heavy, or some would say differently heavy. Hetfield and Hammet tossed the scooped sound and went with more textured distortion. The song structures changed and everything became slower and occasionally more groovy. And then there was that injection of country. And a million air guitars smash against an imaginary wall to the tune of Hetfield's slide gee-taw (or was it Hammet, i'm not sure).

That all being said, i don't necessarily think that this was necessarily all that bad. I actually like Load and Reload quite a lot... just less than the stuff from Kill 'Em All to And Justice For All. And anyway, as the band said on many occasions, they'd taken the old sound as far as it could go. Of course little did we know at that time that St Anger awaited us... an album that was an extravagantly misguided attempt by the band to return to their heavier root whilst simultaneously persuing a minamilist song writing *and* production avenue... which isn't to say i didn't like it besides itself, but i'm to nackered to get into that now.

UPDATE: whilst "researching" this topic, i found one of the more bizarre things i have ever seen: The James Hetfield Hair Watch. If i were you reading this i would think that the other i was taking the piss, but alas the former i would be mistaken. Quite funny though, in a creepy obsessive, Hetfield-is-a-misguided-stud kind of a way.

Ozzy vs. The Osbournes...

clive — Fri, 8 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Osbournes, without the slightest doubt, is responsible for raising Ozzy Osbourne's profile to the highest its ever been in his career of over 30 years. Even those bats and doves didn't award Ozzy with this sheer octane of publicity. So everythings well then. Well, not so much. As an enormous Ozzy/Sabbath fan The Osbournes can be somewhat of an irritant.

Back before The Osbournes, Ozzy had a certain amount of mystique. Basically, if you weren't a fan, you either thought that a) he was an infinitely hardcore lunatic devil man, or b) you just didn't know that he existed at all. Thanks to The Osbournes, the world is now presented with option c) that he's a foul mouthed, hazy minded Englishman doddering about his palatial LA estate with a severe inability to master any sort of technology.

Fair enough, the man is what he is, but this has to rate as somewhat of a marketing faux paux as far as his music career is concerned - you have the left hand promoting this man as the Price Of Darkness whilst the right hand promotes the bumbling father whose dogs defecate on his carpet. Okay fine, Ozzy's at the point now where the meat of his recording career's behind him and any publicity can only do him good. Unfortunately though, seeing only this offbeat-father-TV-personality side of Ozzy robs you of his onstage transformation. Sure, a lot of people don't really like Ozzy's voice (a previous version of his own offical site used to refer to his voice as being 'thin and lacking range' actually) but he is an exceptionally charismatic and engaging performer.

That aside, if we absolutely have to live in a world where The Osbournes is on TV, i wish it could be more Ozzy-centric. I'm not sure if its always on purpose, but he's quite a funny guy. And by all rights, being born into an extremely poor Birmingham family shouldn't have secured Ozzy much more in life than a career in coal mining. Ozzy rules.

Aborted crappy artwork reborn...

clive — Fri, 8 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

This is something which i abandoned due to stuffing it up a bit... but i still kind of think it has the seeds of goodness, so here it is.

I was trying to get a cool image of a guy non chalantly shooting off into the distance, and i kind of think i got the body language of it okay. The shooting arm and gun are an unfocused mess, though... stupid lack of abilities.

Super-duper-man...

clive — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

If you're into comics, this'll be old news to you and you may as well skip it. And if you're not into comics, you'll have no interest in this to begin with... interesting situation i've created here.

Okay, what i'm getting to here is Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's run on All Star Superman (and why oh why DC couldn't think of something better than "All Star" i can't imagine). Despite my love for comics, Superman has never really appealed to me. Sure sure, he's an icon and all, buts he's so strong and all-powerful and all that writers always come up with some totally contrived challenge for him. BUT, I was fascinated by an interview with Morrison that I read on Newsarama where he discussed his approach to Superman. Basically, he'd by pure chance happened upon a man in an amusement park one night who was dressed as Superman. He then proceeded to talk to this guy for the next few hours, with him answering all questions in character as Superman.

Morrison: "The thing that really hit me though, wasn't so much what he was saying as how he was sitting. The guy was perched on a bollard with one knee drawn up, chin resting on his arms. He looked totally relaxed...and I suddenly realized this was how Superman would sit. He wouldn't puff out his chest or posture heroically, he would be totally chilled. If nothing can hurt you, you can afford to be cool. A man like Superman would never have to tense against the cold; never have to flinch in the face of a blow. He would be completely laid back, un-tense. With this image of Superman relaxing on a cloud looking out for us all in my head, I rushed back to my hotel room and filled dozens of pages of my notebook with notes and drawings."

That struck me as hella cool. Perfect, actually. Having a totally relaxed Superman instead of having him posing like some Baywatch hunk dumbass is such a fundamentally reasonable idea that its hard to imagine why it hasn't been done before. Still, it would all depend on the execution, right? Truthfully, there was never any reason to think that super-god-uber-artist-dude Frank Quitely was going to shaft things, but DC's release of this image (based on the idea Morrison mentioned towards the end of the above paragraph) blew me away. I reckon that's how *i'd* be sitting around if i knew for absolute sure i was the strongest man in the world and nothing much could touch me.

(Full Newsarama interview here)

Crappy drawings #2: Beastie Boys...

clive — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Again, more of me sketching stuff. This time it'd be 2 of the Beastie Boys. Oh, don't worry, they're totally unrecognisable so it could just as well be drawings of my cousins Jose Clementine and Antoine Goodfellow. But i digress, this is from one of their photo shoots. I'm not sure what the photos were originally used for, but they appear in the (very cool) Anthology: The Sounds Of Science set's booklet. (The photo features all 3 beasties, but i ran out of page and willpower, so you'll have to live without one of the Adams... i forget which is Yauch and which is Horowitz)

Alas, it fails to capture the cool ridiculousness of the photo, but it's here.

(And now that i've finished making excuses, allow me to mention that i thought their recently(ish) released album, To The 5 Burroughs was excellent and kudos to them for making it lyrically Bush intolerant despite angering many of their fans.)

UPDATE: having performed "research", this is Adam Horovitz and this is Adam Yauch. Thus, i'm missing Yauch.

Crappy drawings #3: Mr Cobain...

clive — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

So, what if someone drew Kurt Cobain, but it looked nothing like him? Well, wonder no more...

This is off one of the photos for Unplugged In New York. While i've never cared much for the utter Nirvana and Cobain worship that was so common in the 90's (even now to a lesser extent), i have always liked their music and always found something haunting about the image from which this sketch is taken. The one where you see Cobain with his band dominating most of the photo, the man in his element, free, performing a great set for an appreciative crowd. But ironically thats all out of focus in the background. In the corner of the image in the foreground, you have a monitor with the live video feed for its respective camera, Cobain imprisoned in the television set, in his own fame.

My drawing doesn't look like the man, nor does it capture the mood described above, but i kind of like it all the same.

This is the new s***...

clive — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200

This is actually an update on my RIP John Paul II post, but I feel it merits its own post. Just to spare your mouse wheel, my sort of conclusion there was: While i dont really believe in the idea of having a Pope, we are going to have one anyway, so i hope its going to be a decent guy with a good heart who'll do the best he can to just make things better in as many places as he can.

Well, Pope Benedict XVI has been elected, better known to his maw and paw as Joseph Ratzinger. CNN is as good a place as any to read about him, i suppose.

Far be it from me to criticise the election of this... er, was it "Cardinal No"... oh, yes, yes... i believe it was. And that quote of his... now, what was it, oh yes: "Being an adult means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties...". Mmm, now that doesn't sound very encouraging does it. Sorry ladies, no positions of power in the church for you. And what was that he called homosexuality... oh, wait wait... ah, yes: "an intrinsic moral evil." And in the words of CNN, he issued a document saying that Catholicism was the only true religion, questioning the validity of other religions, even Christian ones. And it goes on a bit, but I'm sure you can read just as well as I can cut and paste quotes.

Well, thats immensely dissapointing to me. This guy doesn't sound like he's going to be doing anything positive in the world at all. Even if those quotes have been taken out of context, this sounds like a guy spewing hatred. Oh, and i forgot to mention, he's 78. So, even if he was going to be a great Pope, he's already living on borrowed time, so who knows how long it'll be before his health deteriates like the previous Pope's.

Thing is, this guy is what he is, for good or bad. But what does it say that he gets elected? That the vast majority of the Cardinals agree with his viewpoints. Homosexuals are evil, women have no place seeking power in religion, divorcees are evil, if people would be good Catholics AIDS wouldn't be a problem, etc.

Just seems like another wasted position of power to me.

Things that go pump in the night...

clive — Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

I hate doing day-in-the life posts and this actually happened quite a while ago, but whatever, this is just too special. It all started waaay back on 21st April when this gentleman was poking around the office ceiling. Okay, first a bit of context, where i work we have a thatched roof. So he's poking around a particularly inaccessible corner of the thatch with a flashlight strapped to his forehead (don't even ask) and he screams out something to the effect that he has found a pleasure toy in the thatch. To which we replied something along the lines of 'you sir, are not being truthful'. A quick inspection suggested that the alledged item was no more than a piece of electrical tubing, seeing as it was tube-like and had wires protruding from its end. But lo! For slightly further inspection revealed, erm, ribbing. And a little later the strapping young lad with the flash light on his forehead determined that the previously discovered wires were part of some sort of distance control for the device.

One can only imagine how such a device might have gotten to be there and why its owner would have left it behind. Needless to say, that was a great, albeit disturbing, day. Looky.

Pete Steele Lives...

clive — Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Just a word of warning to any fellow Type O Negative fans. I near soiled myself when I hit their official website a few minutes ago only to find something that very much gives the impression that Pete Steele has died. Basically the site currently features nothing but a (cheesy, very fake looking) picture of a grave stone bearing the words "Peter Steele, Free At Last, 1962 - 2005". However, according to this article, its just a standard exhibition of the bands dark sense of humour. Which is a relief.

Presumably, they'll have a proper web site back up in a while, so for archival purposes, here is the grave stone image (scaled down for the love of my bandwidth).

Still Clerkin' After All These Years...

clive — Sun, 22 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

For a while now, the world has known that Kevin Smith's follow up to Jersey Girl would be a sequel to his first film, Clerks, snappily entitled Clerks 2: The Passion Of The Clerks. This sequel had previously been mentioned in the end credits of Dogma, then less snappily entitled as Clerks 2: Still Clerkin'.

Anyway, this article over at CHUD (which shows the movie's first poster) resurrected the memory of C2: TPOTC. As they put it: "Treading water now has an image". Which is both amusing and true. As much as i like Smith and pretty much his entire output, this definitely seems to be an admission of defeat. To recap recent history, after the critical and relative commercial success of Dogma, Smith decided that he'd do one last View Askew film to bid a fond farewell to his ViewAskewniverse. And thus was born Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. Starring Smith and Mewes and largely driven by ViewAskewniverse in-jokes, it probably made as much coin as any reasonable person could have dreamed. And with that, Smith severed ties with his little Jersey-centric world and took his shot at the big time. That being Jersey Girl, the movie that Gigli killed (in multiple horrible ways). I have yet to see Jersey Girl, so i can't really say if it deserved better than it got.

And so, Smith heads on back to that to which he said he would not return. And not because he had to. He was given the assignment of writing and directing the super hero movie The Green Hornet only to later turn down the directing portion. Sure, it might not sound great, but in the world of comics, Smith has a reputation for reinvigorating B-listers like Daredevil and The Green Arrow (although admittedly The Green Hornet is a unquestionable Z-lister). He's been a lock for making a potential Fletch franchise for years now, all he needs to do is bother to start doing it. Jason Lee as Fletch? Bring it on please. Its just hard to not see Smith as a man heading back to his comfort zone in the face of defeat instead of stepping up to the plate, stretching himself and his craft and taking up a challenge. (It'd also be nice if he'd stop regarding Ben Affleck as the De Niro to his Scorcesse)

That's the rant finished. My other concern is, can a new Clerks movie be good? Clerks was more of a "real" movie than any other ViewAskewniverse project (along with Chasing Amy to an extent). No in-jokes, no familiar faces, no Ben Affleck, just a day in the life of some regular guys with one or two less than regular activities thrown in.

And here's that first poster. As you can tell, the image is from the photo shoots for publicising the original Clerks. Can't help but wonder if even the likes of Spielberg or Oliver Stone have ever imagined having their image front-and-center on a poster for one of their movies (even one in which they had a non-speaking role).

(my apologies: i don't currently have enough bandwidth to get the link to CHUD's atricle, will update soonest)

Re-visiting The Dark Side...

clive — Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

And now for the next entry in Clive's Geeklog: So I saw Revenge Of The Sith this weekend. It was a strange feeling really... no real excitement, no real anticipation. If you'd have told me all those years ago when i was waiting in line for my Phantom Menace ticket that it'd all come down to this, i probably wouldn't have believed you. Back then i had a whole lot of faith that Lucas knew exactly what he was doing, never mind what the critics were saying about the movie. Of course, it turned out they were right. I actually went to see that movie a second time a few days later because i was certain that it must have been better than i thought it was first time around.

But that was then and this is now: Episode III. Its good. Not great. Lots of irritating rubbish in there for sure, but overall solid, i thought. Considering the ground that Lucas and his team had to cover in this movie, i'd say the movie is probably really far better than i would ever have thought it could be. But its by no means flawless. And its severely hobbled by the mediocrity of Episodes I and II in many cases. One big example of that being Padme and Anakin's big love... its certainly more convincing here than in Episode II, but its still not utterly convincing and by this time its just too late. And Anakin is and was never really set up as the great Jedi warrior he's meant to be. Consequently, it's virtually impossible for the makers of this movie to make Anakin's turn towards the Dark Side the soul destroying tradgedy that it really should be. If the previous movies had been able to make us care in the slightest about the other Jedi, maybe their fates would have been more stirring in this movie. Also, it may just be that i'm getting used to Hayden's performance, but i found Anakin to be less of a pain in the ass in this movie. Leading to the odd situation where i wasn't really too phased about him slaughtering innocents at any point. And it goes on...

Blah, blah, blah. Like i said, though, it is good. I'd say its worth the watch. It just had the burden of having to make up for a lot of the flaws of the prior prequel movies, not to mention having a whole heap of flaws of its own. Of course, its also burdened by a couple of generations' love for the original trilogy. This isn't an unwatchable abortion like Matrix Revolutions but it is still part of a trilogy that went horribly wrong early on and probably should never have been made at all. Anyway, you already know whether you'll see the thing or not. You probably even already have a fair idea how much you'll like it or how much you won't. So go do that.

Enter The Love Hole...

clive — Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Love Hole, #1

I've been wanting to do some sort of web comic strip type thing for a while now. I had planned to do this ages ago, but when it came to actually drawing the things everything just went south. Too much trouble, took too long, no fun, didn't feel like doing it. But then i ended up having the exact same problems on the jeanpant chronicles. It occurred to me to just use a really simple style and minimilistic character designs and that's working pretty well, so now i'm going to try the same thing with the love hole. Hopefully it'll be at least moderately amusing.

(By the by, i accidentally editted out the piece of dialogue that indicated that this is taking place in a video store)

Go Ahead, Mister Wendal...

clive — Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Despite the prospects looking bleak for a while, Arrested Development, my favourite thing on TV, will get a 3rd season... Praise Odin!

(information pilferred from CHUD)

Koop Vir My 'n Kaartjie Huistoe...

clive — Fri, 27 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

If you have so much as a passing interest in Fokofpolisiekar and have any sort of general interest in the behind the scenes working of local bands, you might be interested in this series of diary entry type things by Elisma Roets for sarock.co.za: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6. I found them progressively more interesting as they became less about the band's shows and more about their kombi. Reading the entire thing (in one sitting anyway) will probably be beyond most people's level of interest in this sort of thing, but I quite like this kind of thing. Nice stuff.

(by the by, it's all in afrikaans, but i've translated the entire thing here)

(no, of course i didn't translate it)

A New Hole...

clive — Mon, 30 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Love Hole, #2

Yup, the second entry in the offical clivesdominion strip. I actually thought this one would work a little better. Reckon this kind of thing actually needs a few more panels to give a better sense of comedic timing. Ah well, live and learn. I expect that i'll probably only really get the hang of what i'm doing here round about the 10th one or so.

(you can get an index of all the released 'holes at the bottom of the whorage page)

Let There Be Rock...

clive — Fri, 3 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Came across this article about Metallica parting ways with producer Bob Rock. Of course, one only requires the services of a producer when one is recording. Similarly, one only needs to part ways with one's producer when one is either recording or considering recording. Considering that Metallica have released 4 albums of original studio recordings in the last 15 years, new music from them is a pretty big deal. Of course, it took the guys 2 years to make St. Anger, so some might not be all that excited, but it is still a big deal.

Except it isn't. Because, as it turns out, this was actually an April Fool's hoax that seems to have originally turned up on www.allmetallica.com. So why even bother mentioning this? For one thing, just to spread the word a little that it's not for real, seeing as it turns out that some other sites have picked up on this as bona fide news. But also, because i find this just a tad bit irritating. Don't get me wrong, i enjoy a decent April Fool's hoax. Like Iron Maiden's one about adapting Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son into an ice skating show. But this Bob Rock thing? Normally, April Fools jokes are either bizarre or funny or something along those lines. Yet, Bob Rock parting ways with Metallica is neither amusing nor amusingly unlikely. In fact, its something that an appreciable percentage of Metallica fans might like to see happen. When people read an April Fool's hoax and say 'yipee!' there has been a failure. Further, the article states that Metallica went out of their way to insist that this was not an April fool's hoax despite the timing. Admittedly though, this bit was probably added to the article as a kind of an ass backwards clue to people who read this later on other sites whom had assumed the news to be true.

Not too sure if the idea for this particular hoax was Metallica's or purely that of the people whom run the site. Whichever, i'd like to see all involved stick to the format from now on. You know the drill: "Metallica prepares to record album of Chicago covers" or "James Hetfield to leave Metallica to join professional over 40's rugby league".

(incidentally, this aside, Alter Ego is a pretty cool local site for local and international news concerning the heavier corners of the music industry and some other stuff.)

The Love Hole Beckons...

clive — Thu, 9 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

The Love Hole, #3

In comics, there is an entire artform and profession called lettering. Now you know why. Also, this one somehow looked a whole lot better on paper than it does now once scanned.

That aside, in my mind, the music that's being played in the video store is Dimmu Borgir.

(you can get an index of all the released 'holes at the bottom of the whorage page)

Kirk 1, Picard 0...

clive — Thu, 9 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

When Tyler Durden asks the nameless lead of Fight Club which celebrity he'd like to beat up, he replies William Shatner. I didn't have too much of a problem with that until I heard the immortal words:

Denny Crane

(here's a mildly bizarre thing with Shatner doing a mind meld with Denny Crane on his site... by the by, Patrick Stewart is fantastic)

Still Clerkin' After All These Years (Revisited)...

clive — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

A while back (22 May), i did a fairly negative commentary on the fact that Kevin Smith was returning to the View Askewniverse by making another Clerks movie. I basically implied that Smith was a lazy lazy person whom in a Tolkien-esque fashion seemed content to keep filling his One Good Idea with more and more detail, rather than prove his genius by doing something completely different well. Now, having performed some research, i feel i may have made my initial judgement a little hastily. And by 'research' i mean that i read what Smith himself had to say about the project over on the official View Askew site. Now how many more nuns to i have to throw into moving traffic to get my Pulitzer? You can read Kevin Smith's words right here.

Basically, he said enough of the right things that i wanted to hear. The foremost of those being that the movie won't be in-joke driven like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was, Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson are going to be the absolute focus of the movie, and Jay and Silent Bob's roles will be similarly sized to that in the original Clerks. It's also cool to hear that the movie will be at least partially B&W. And i'm thrilled that i seem to have been wrong. Clerks brings me more pleasure than the sight of midgets on tricycles wearing amusing hats. I first saw Clerks at a time when myself and many of my best friends just happened to be exceptionally similar to Dante and Randall in many ways and it was wonderful to watch a movie about guys like us. Or to put it less charitably, to finally feel like we were part of some global community of losers. And its one of my favourite movies to this day.

(UPDATE: i had originally written a loose review of Smith's Jersey Girl as a closing piece for this post. On re-reading, it was so unfocused as to be totally worthless to anybody. I'm not going to try doing it again, but the general gist was that Jersey Girl isn't the greatest movie, but it could have been a lot worse and is less lame than the trailers would have you believe. Essentially, i reckon it deserved a little better than it got.)

Get Comfortably Numb...

clive — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Interesting, this, Pink Floyd will be reuniting after a period of about 20 years to play in Hyde Park. As you may or may not know, Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters turned the notion of a non-amicable parting into not only an artform but also a spectator sport, so it's nice to see that this will actually be happening. Of course, it's for a good cause, as Gilmour said: "I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increase aid to the Third World." While this event is definitely something special for Pink Floyd fans and fans of great music in general, i'm not too sure that the G8 leaders care a whole lot about the prospects of having Gilmour and Waters on stage simultaneously. I was not aware that their pairing constituted some sort of divine Bono-esque presence in the minds of world leaders. That having been said, i'm a huge fan of Pink Floyd and am glad that they're doing what they can to improve this world.

UPDATE: Despite my doubts about the ability that music and musicians have to make world leaders grow a heart, the original Live Aid (the Pink Floyd reunion is part of Bob Geldof's Live 8 'sequel' to that event) made a lot of people stop and care, read about it here. Also, i forgot to mention it before, but it's kind of cool that Geldof orchestrated this reunion since he played the lead character Pink in the movie of The Wall.

The Famous Betamax Case (that clive had never heard of)...

clive — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

I suppose lots of people already know this, but its something i've often wondered about. That being, what's the legal issue surrounding the selling of recording devices. You know, primarily VCR's and tape decks but these days also MP3 players and DVD recorders and that sort of thing. I'd always imagined it was probably just some legal loophole or maybe a law that was passed at a less knowledgable time (kind of like how we're told that cigarettes would have a lot of trouble being legalised had they only been introduced in the last few years). As it turns out, though, the issue was decided in a famous landmark court case, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. aka the Betamax case. Hence, me saying that lots of people already probably know about it.

But, for the plebs like myself, i will summarise badly and inaccurately. Sony had pioneered home video recording with their Betamax VCR's (later to be overtaken by VHS recorder as a household device, but used in television to this day). Sensing mass copyright infringement on the horizon, Disney and MGM decided to sue Sony for making and selling a device that enabled people to infringe copyright and arguably encouraged people to do so. After much to and fro on the parts of the courts, Sony was eventually declared to be legally in the right in 1984 because a) the VCR had sufficient practical uses that would not involve copyright infringement (although it was acknowleged that copyright infringement would take place) and b) because part of that perceived copyright infringement was actually just time-shifting. I had never heard the term time-shifting before reading about this, but if you didn't already figure it out, its exactly what it sounds like: you don't have time to watch something now, you tape it, watch it at a convenient time and then (presumably) do away with your copy of the material. Or alternatively, you buck the system like a mad man and still regularly watch episodes of Friends that you taped 10 years ago, because who the hell needs DVD clarity to enjoy the one where Chandler gets trapped in the ATM vestibule anyway?

So there you go. You can get a far more accurate and thorough summary on wikipedia. I eventually became aware of this case due to it being mentioned in this article on the Register, because creators of P2P software are attempting (with mixed success) to base their legality on similar arguments.

UPDATE: on the P2P front, Grokster and Streamcast appear to be taking it on the chin and the Register is deeply concerned.

Turning On The Dead Man...

clive — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Some more stuff everyone already knows. I was vaguely aware that at some point in the mid-to-late 60's Paul McCartney was rumoured to have been dead. My minimilistic understanding being that it had something to do with his being the only non-shoe-wearing Beatle on the Abbey Road cover. But, seeing as how Sir McCartney's been commonly accepted as being alive since before I was born, i never really paid much attention to the whole issue. So, when i eventually happened upon this by pure dumb luck i was amazed to find out just how convoluted the whole issue was and continues to be.

In the hoax's fuller form, Paul McCartney is meant to have died in a violent car accident around '65ish due to head trauma. Believers feel that the song She's Leaving Home suggests that the accident happened at "5 a.m. on a Wednesday morning". The story then goes that the Beatles, realising the effect that the news of Paul's death would have, held a Paul McCartney look-alike competition, never intending to announce a winner because this person was in fact to become his stand-in, thereby allowing the Beatles to continue to go about being the Beatles. This winner was William Campbell, subtlely given a nod to with the lyrics "let me introduce to you the one and only Billy Shears". Campbell is meant to have a small scar that allows the cunning conspiracy theorist to distinguish him from Paul ver1.0. And so, over the course of the next few years, a substantial number of clues were left throughout lyrics, album artwork and publicity photos, the lyrics i quoted being but the tip of the ice berg.

Basically, there are 2 points of interest in the whole Paul Is Dead hoax. Firstly, the fact that people believed it, since it is substantially out there. I mean, if you suspend belief and actually accept that story as truth, i reckon its fairly creepy. Secondly, since most people have accepted that McCartney is alive, many have shifted their attention to the supposed deliberate and elaborate joke that was played on them by the Beatles, their label Apple or some other mysterious entity over the course of many many years. To these people, the thrill of the chase would lie with the who and why of the issue, with some believing it to be a publicity stunt on the Beatles' part, some believing it to be a manifestation of Lennon's jealousy and others believing different stuff altogether. Of course, to believe this, you must first believe that such a hoax was ever actually perpetrated, and in all likelihood, it wasn't. Substantial portions of the hoax appear to have been made up (like the William Campbell bits), some are based on inaccurate information (like the Walrus representing death, read about it in the links) and lyrics are always open to interpretation.

For a light years better summary than mine you can check out wikipedia.

Throw Away Your Television...

clive — Wed, 6 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0200

A bit late, but hey. I was reading a Stephen King article written in the aftermath of Jackson's trial, which as you know was focused on the parameters that the gentleman sets himself for his friendships with little boys. And while it doesn't feature Jack Torrance engaging in psychological warfare with the garden hedges, its still a fairly engaging piece of writing. I've become so used to the 'how couldn't they have found him guilty' reaction that this was quite a refreshing change. King concerns himself not so much with the outcome, but with America and the world's sick obsession with this case and how that obsession is/was driven by Jackon's fame and general abnormality.

Which got me thinking. I didn't waste anytime watching or reading about the case, but i definitely do think that Jackson is guilty. I assumed his fame and (alledgedly dwindling) wealth would keep him out of any serious trouble, but I always thought he was guilty. Still do. Let's say that i think he's a pretty sick and disgusting guy. Which is all fine and well, but what exactly do i base this information on? I've never met the man or anyone who's met him. My opinions are based on the information i've absorbed concerning the man and his lifestyle. Information supplied to me by the media. I know absolutely nothing about Michael Jackson that i haven't learnt from the media. The same media i don't trust to accurately inform me about the motives of George W. Bush or about what it actually is that the US is doing in Iraq. I presume you see where i'm going with this. It's easy to believe almost anything that the media tells me about Jackson, firstly because its entertaining to see the famous fall, but also because he's a weirdo and its easy to believe that a weirdo who can't stop fiddling around with his face could easily be fiddling about inappropriately with little boys. (Of course, despite realising the media's ability to distort or make up news we aren't left with any real options since there's only so much that one can experience firsthand)

Don't get me wrong. Despite this observation i still think Jackson's guilty. (Even if he isn't guilty, i think that his habits, including sharing a bed with his child friends, are enormously inappropriate) Unfortunately, my conclusion is nil, but i thought it was an observation worth noting.

I hurt myself today...

clive — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0200

See the thumbnail next to this post? It's an album cover. For a band by the name of Option 30. See the gentleman standing farthest to the right, the one in the striped shirt. That would be a youthful Trent Reznor.

Hopefully, this can assist in making you feel a little better about that high school photo where you look like a mildly sentient potato man contemplating the meaning of turquoise, the one where you're standing around staring numbly into the distance, drooling whilst considering how liquorice may best be interpreted as a sound.

(I really like With_Teeth, in case anyone cares. As much as i liked The Fragile, it's pretty cool to have Reznor going back to more of a Pretty Hate Machine vibe. If you want more The Fragile, you'll probably be dissapointed, but otherwise it's a great album. The record studio bean counters will probably also be overjoyed that Reznor's applied himself to some more commercial material this time around.)

The chickens are restless...

clive — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0200

'The stage is set for the emergence of a fresh human influenza pandemic. These occur when a virus to which most people have no immunity, usually an avian strain, acquires the ability to transmit readily from person to person. H5N1 hasn't yet gained that ability . and hopefully, it will not...'

Or it might already have. Arrggghhh. H5N1 is more commonly known as avian flu/bird flu/chicken flu, if you follow the theme. For an idea on the consequences of flu pandemics, we apparently got off real lucky last time one of these came along back in '68 (the H3N2 virus) when 'only' 750,000 people died worldwide. The H1N1 virus of 1918 resulted in deaths in the region of 40 million people.

Three human fatalities in Indonesia this week caused the British government to sit up and take notice. They've order 2 million units of a vaccine. The fear being, of course, that the virus may have reached the human-to-human stage of spreading (as opposed to chicken-to-human).

This is all too big and too horrible sounding for me to compute right now, so if you have any interest, check out this man-on-the-street aimed article from The Register, which they've entitled with characteristic British verve 'Bird flu: we're all going to die'. Since you might (understandably) doubt The Register's credentials as a reporter of science/health news, more detailed information is available at the Web Focus on Avian Flu (which the Register article advises you to check out).

New Pixies Album...

clive — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0200

As related to NME by the Frank Black/Black Francis multi persona.

Realistically, it's hard to say if the Pixies have another good album in them or if this is something that would just be better off not happening. But i'm going to hope that they do and that this should.

Thank you god for Big Jim Martin...

clive — Thu, 4 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0200

And by 'Big' Jim Martin i mean the weird big dude who used to be Faith No More's guitarist back when they were still amazing (and when they still existed, of course). Martin left the band after Angel Dust and reportedly commemorated the occasion by bicycling across Canada.

I was extremely pleased to discover that Jim Martin has grown the world's 235th largest pumpkin.

some more info...

Look upon Ricky, and know that he is good...

clive — Thu, 4 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Ricky Gervais has a ridiculously well updated and entertaining official website with lots of articles and videos and stuff.

I particularly recommend the section with Live 8 promos which include Ricky suggesting that hunger problems in Africa could be alleviated by 'eating all the animals' and him wondering about singing the Bohemian Rhapsody whilst Stephen Merchant (the other brain behind The Office) attempts to explain the true motivations of Live 8.

A thankful reminder that the entire world does not live by america's obessively pc, flaccid standards for humour.

clive doesn't like 'shippers...

clive — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:36:00 +0200

Thanks to The Beat, i was introduced to the concept of 'shipping (short for relationshipping, kill me). Those whom practice 'shipping are in turn called 'shippers (where oh where does one find the poisoned womb that births these terms). Naturally, this term is new only to me and not to the world at large, which is doomed. But if you found yourself inhabiting the underside of a rock like myself, 'shipping is the practice of obsessively championing and crusading for relationships that may or may not exist between fictional characters. And if i managed to find a thumbnail for this post that didn't make me look like an utter pedo, you'll see that i came into contact with this term due to Harry Potter-based 'shipping. Turns out there was a bit of a brouhaha on some of the bigger Potter fan sites due to JK Rowling finally casting in stone which way the principal cast members are to couple in Half Blood Prince. Spoilers el grande ensue. So, there were a titanic number of people whom felt that Harry and Hermione should get together. Sincerely, i hope Jason Priestly bursts down from the heavens wielding a flame torch with a pink bow on it and kills you all... but lets be diplomatic for a second. Well... okay, fair enough, previous books showed no signs of such a romance, but why not, ey? In fact, the previous 2 books showed deliberate signs that this would certainly not happen. So much so, that the movies injected clues ahead of the books they were adapting. But hey, life is all about dreaming, isn't it? Well, never mind all the evidence to the contrary, turns out a good few of these people believed so strongly in the Potter/Granger love that they took it upon themselves to generate enormous quantities of romantic fan-fiction involving these characters. Romantic fan fiction. A world in flames, soothed by romantic fan fiction revolving around the hitherto unhinted at love between two imaginary 15 year olds. And these people are denouncing the newest book and pledging never to return to the books again. Seeing as how Rowling has satisfied readers in sufficient quantities that she's rich enough to have Eminem crucified on Trafalgar square on a cross made of Paul McCartney's furniture, she's probably not too concerned, but come on. In fact, i strongly suspect that many of the people campaigning for the Harry/Hermione pairing probably only feel so strongly about the issue because the movie renditions of the characters are so darn good lookin'. May a Patrick Swayze shaped gazelle defacate and dance on your burnt remains whilst chanting 'Nobody puts baby in the corner'.

(and just to clarify, its only the stubborn obsession that i'm truly ranting about above. caring about fictional characters, and even their romantic lives, is fine by me. and the thumbnail i tracked down so makes me look like an utter pedo... arg)

God is red...

clive — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:37:00 +0200
I've actually pimped Max Cannon's Red Meat before, but this one was so particularly humourously offensive that i thought i'd take the oppurtunity to do so again.

On the topic of webcomics, you may (or may not) recall that i was doing one and abruptly ceased doing so on 9 June. I still plan on doing it, but the free time i have for that sort of thing has been taken up mostly by writing a back end for this site as of late. That's almost done, and things like comments (god help me) and rss will be functional soon. I also had a lovely breakfast this morning and continue to experience regular bowel movements.

clivesdominion wishes you a spectacular day.

A great day for all mankind...

clive — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:30:00 +0200
Okay, so at long last i've written a backend for this thankless little website... (via apache/mysql/perl)

What difference does this make to you, you may ask. Well... not so much. It was more of a pet project for me, so i could fill up my free time with something more productive than trying to grow my Tom Welling clone. What the hypothetical reader (if any of you even exist at all) will get out of this is an RSS feed (the image links aren't working currently) and the ability to comment on posts... oh, and no more frames... yeehaa

What i will get out of this is more concrete proof that no one visits this site at all, and -of course- abusive comments. So, lets see how it all goes then, shall we?

(UPDATE: i've noticed that god's browser of choice sometimes squashes up the text, but alas i'll only be able to fix that later)

(UPDATE: several months later, i've finally made the fix alluded to above, so if you're using the browser ordained by the almighty, it should be looking a bit better)

The Dark Knight comes again...

clive — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:57:00 +0200
DC Comics is pissed because a New York based painter by the name of Mark Chamberlain has painted a series of watercolours featuring Batman and Robin. And they are threatening action against art dealer Kathleen Cullen for having the verve to exhibit said artworks.

Oh, and did i mention that said watercolours feature the Dark Knight and his beloved Boy Wonder in a range of homo-erotic poses... hence them becoming commonly known as the "gay Batman" watercolours. Look and see... (NSFW probably)

As the copyright owners of these characters, DC Comics naturally has the right to be irked by some guy making money off of their property (the paintings are being sold). Similarly, they quickly forced a recall of Sufjan Stevens (whom i've never otherwise heard of, if you're wondering) CD's a while ago because they had used an image of Superman on the cover without permission. However, there is a lingering question and that is of course, what's getting DC all worked up more: the copyright infringement or the depiction of one of their most popular characters as being homosexual. One might note that a prominently exhibited sculpture by Gilles Barbier showing several DC and Marvel characters aged and in a nursing home never seemed to get a cease and desist from either company (the linked article ponders the issue further). Beyond that, there's a school of thought that enjoys at least modest support that suggests that DC wouldn't have been even nearly as concerned about all this if these paintings had depicted the less controversial and mostly widely and shamelessly loved phenomenom of girl-on-girl homosexuality. Say for instance between Batgirl and Supergirl.

Of course, the Robin depicted in the watercolours was actually somewhere in the region of 12 years old when he started fighting crime with Batman, and I could certainly sympathise with the company not wanting the character implicitely portrayed as a pedophile. However, one just can't help but shake the feeling that all this fuss still has a more than a little to do with general society's viewing of male homosexuality as being deviant and generally unacceptable, evil, wrong, bad, sinful, damnation-worthy, dirty, take your pick. While this may very well be the case (sadly), DC can of course always argue that the copyright is the true concern. Whatever the case, DC has succeeded in drawing enormously more attention to the artworks than would otherwise have been the case.

(links, information, whatever pilferred from: warren ellis, the beat, millarworld)

Weapon of choice...

clive — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:33:00 +0200
The Christopher Walken 2008 presidential campaign, behold its glory. If this thing were for real and the supposed legions of Bush haters actually got off their asses and voted and then actually voted for Walken, I dare say the world might become a better place.

But alas, it is not for real.

The site contains snappy Walkenisms like 'If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house.'. Amen.

UPDATE: since one can never get enough of a good thing, the General Zod 2008 campaign.

Morrison & Quitely loving angels instead...

clive — Tue, 6 Sep 2005 17:18:00 +0200
Bee-zarro... Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely have created the art for the new Robbie Williams album. Uhu, you say. If you don't recognise any of those names besides Mr Williams, that'd be because Morrison and Quitely are huge comics superstars and are thus less famous than the caterer's assistant on the set of King Of Queens.

(Morrison and Quitely's most recent effort was the mind blowing WE3 miniseries and in November the wretchedly titled but looking to be amazing All Star Superman debuts)

Apparently, Williams is a fan of Morrison's writing (Morrison came up with the concepts and Quitely drew them) as well as his POP MAGIC! philosophies/beliefs/teachings and the gentlemen like to shoot the breeze and such. The artwork contains references to said magic. Some people are seeing this as some kind of horrendous sell out, but my 2c would be why not. Williams isn't exactly my kind of thing, but i've happened to see a live show of his on tv and he's a charismatic performer and seems to have infinitely more rock 'n roll spirit in him than a lot a these lame pansy-assed pseudo heavy mtv-friendly rubbish bands you get these days, like, say for instance, Creed.

Here's a trite article and here's a dude who's got some scans of the art.

(UPDATE: All Star Superman #1 preview)
(UPDATE: More and better scans of Quitely's art for the album at LITG)

Relax, everything's fine...

clive — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:49:00 +0200
Whilst bird flu seemed to be overtaking the US in terms of things most likely to cause the extinction of human life on earth lately, the yanquis are fighting back, bless 'em. Or at least the Pentagon's trying, with its latest attempts to ease nuclear war: ...commanders would be able to request permission from the President to use nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios... one possibility is an enemy that is using, or 'is about to use' weapons of mass destruction against US military forces or civilian population... Another is where nuclear weapons could be used against biological weapons that an enemy was close to using, and which could only be safely destroyed by nuclear weapons and their after-effects...At least the current US president doesn't have an itchy trigger finger... oh... wait... i was thinking of the guy with the saxophone. Anyway, all this has yet to be ratified and US Congress hasn't been to keen on this sort of stuff either, but if Dubya likes this idea he seems to have ways of making things happen. Can't say that 'about to use' and 'close to using' encapsulate the kind of specificity i like to see when the big wigs are deciding whether or not to crank open those silo doors.

(propaganda posters like the Buddy Lenin are available here, article linked pilferred from Warren Ellis)

(UPDATE: U.S. physicists are taking a stand. A very very sincere thank you)

What the world needs now is love sweet love...

clive — Tue, 4 Oct 2005 11:00:00 +0200
It's been almost a month since i last posted. It would seem i am not really built for this blogging thing. But the truth is that i've been working on a band project and its taking up all my time. Our sound is kind of like Green Day meets Michael Bolton. You know, adult contemparary ballads with a bit of a garage feel - you know like when you're listening to Michael Learns To Rock and you reach the heavy part of the song and you just wish there was some screaming or maybe a three part guitar harmony over some pounding double bass - well that's what we're putting in there. I think its a real gap in the SA music scene and i've quit my job to devote all my time to this project. I call it GreaseStainedTenderCaress (linking the words like that gives it a bit of street cred i reckon). As a matter of interest, my stage name for this project will be Cl!ve Diabolique.

(UPDATE: my apologies to mr van staden whose comments were lost when i moved servers)

The Filthy Monkey, It Podcasts...

clive — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:47:00 +0200
Warren Ellis is podcasting again, this time under the banner of The Apparat Programme.

As of now, he's done two. This first is a blend of electronica/rock/popiness that made me generally feel good about the world despite not really being my kind of thing. The second is ambient stuff. I have no ambient music expertise to speak of, but those more in keeping with the tastes of today's youth tell me its all good stuff.

It'll vary dramatically from podcast to podcast and promises to provide some relief to those all-too-finite MP3 collections.

UPDATE: just to elaborate a bit more on one of the tracks from the first podcast: Four Color Love Story by the The Metasciences is a really charming little tune which has a lot of clever lyrics from the perspective of a super hero couple that is somewhat aware of the strange rules that govern the universe they live in (like for instance that they've been together for 40 years but still look like they're 23), while still being really sincere and earnest and all.

UPDATE: apparat #3, #4, #5... which features an unexpected but very pleasing appearance of black metal, by a band called Alverg

Monolation (aka: jim morrison is weeping)...

clive — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:19:00 +0200
I'm being a lazy bollock again. Instead of using my blog to preserve my daily memoirs, i'm just going to pilfer content from other better sites. A whole long while back Warren Ellis (yes, yes, the same disgruntled Englishman from the previous post) posted an enthusiastic blurb about a decidely lo-fi band called The Monolators. They made me smile broadly with their fairly unconventional cover of The Doors' classic The End.

There's also a bunch of their original material on their site. The Monolators isn't what i'd call my kind of thing, being very much quirky and lo-fi, but if that is your kind of thing you'll enjoy them greatly. Ellis described them as 'Rock and roll the way God intended'. Some new songs up on the the site too.

(UPDATE: just so we're on the same page here, the Doors' song The End is a near-sacred epic chunk of all things good and pure to me - i find the Monolators' version of the song amusing for the same reasons that the Pope might find the Bible in Lego form amusing - if, he did - which i'm sure he doesn't)

Walk to the light my son...

clive — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:42:00 +0200
Sometimes its hard for me to justify to myself why things amuse me like they do. The Kilowatt lightbulb is one of those things. Take a look at the original picture. That thing is as bright as the f***ing sun. Now how kickass is that? Huh? Huh!?

Well, actually its an array of lightbulbs connected with splitters, but it is still a beacon of hope and love and all things awesome.

(found by this guy, except he's turfed his blog for now)

Thanks but no thanks...

clive — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 11:34:00 +0200
Napster is offering me nothing, which coincidentally happens to be exactly what i want from them.

Read El Reg for more if you will...

Polar Operational Environmental Satellites...

clive — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:06:00 +0200
er... yes... well... alrighty

ADDENDUM A: Only of relevance to South African readers... that'd be the lonely 3 of you standing in the middle of the empty room of my readership

ADDENDUM B: yes, i'm sorry, it's one of those days

ADDENDUM C: no, no, no! ignore the satellites! it's not 1960 anymore! there is unintentional potty mouth up for grabs here dammit!

A more innocent time...

clive — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:39:00 +0200
I only became familiar with KISS's actual music fairly late in life, just after finishing up school around 10 years ago. Why this is i do not know. Probably the make-up put me off. Anyway, while a great deal of their lyrics struck me as a tad more testosterone fueled than most bands (and often seeming to lack the tongue-in-cheek factor of bands like AC/DC), Christine Sixteen in particular stood out (to me) as being ludicrously inappropriate.

Paticularly Gene Simmons' spoken piece: I don't usually say things like this to girls your age, but when I saw you, coming out of the school that day, that day I knew, I knew, I've got to have you, I've got to have you. The above compliments are a little later euphorically punctuated with: Christine Sixteen, she's been around, but she's young and clean. Erm, yes. Cleanliness is next to godliness i suppose.

For the sake of context, nothing in the lyrics suggests that the song is sung from the perspective of anyone other than the members themselves, nor does it really suggest that the song refers to a time in their lives when they were younger men. Also, while 16 pretty much covers the age of consent for the US (although its actually 17 in New York where the band was formed), there's something just a little creepy about a *28-year-old* Gene Simmons (the song was first released in 1977, Simmons was born in 1949) perving over teenage girls as they leave school (not that i'm suggesting that he ever did such a thing).

Okay, that wraps up today's installment of clive's great moments in rock. No, there was no reason for it. Not at all.

They float, they all float...

clive — Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:49:00 +0200
It has long been rumoured that Stephen King would be involved in comics work for Marvel. This was confirmed on Friday, along with the news that King's work would form part of his epic cowboy/fantasy/sci-fi Dark Tower series. Which is pretty cool news... for me anyway... i like King, i particularly like the DT books, i read comics... what's there not to like? Well...

Joe Quesada (Marvel's Editor In Chief) used the latest installment of his weekly Joe Fridays feature on Newsarama to elaborate on the news. All is well when Quesada is saying stuff like: '...Mr. King just kind of looked up at the ceiling, and off the top of his head, started rattling off stories and stories and stories. He was telling about parts where Roland would go and do this and such, and then meet the villain here, and on and on. Literally, in ten minutes, he rattled off enough stories fill up roughly four or five trade paperbacks. He just did it offhand - the stories just poured out of him, and all of them middle, beginnings and ends...'. That's pretty cool... highlights King's natural story telling abilities and his love for his characters and world... life is peachy.

Now normally, what would follow this sort of meeting is a few months of King hammering out DT: The Comic scripts. It might take him a while since he's unfamiliar with writing scripts for the funny book format and he's a busy man in general, but thems the apples. Normally, yes.

However, according to Quesada, this is basically where King's role in the process ends for now. King's 'Literally, in ten minutes' worth of talking was taken down by (DT authority) Robin Furth and then worked into a comics format by Quesada and Furth until it was 'something written in the Marvel style'. Uhu. What they have prepared will be handed on to artist supreme Jae Lee. Uhu. For now they're concentrating on the visuals and 'the actual scripting will be the finishing touch'. Note that Quesada entirely sidesteps the issue of whether that finishing touch is to be administered by King himself.

Uhhhhh. Is it wrong of me to feel underwhelmed by this? Cheated, wronged, befouled maybe. I mean, this is Stephen 'words are his power' King we're talking about here. This guy bangs out 600 page manuscripts while his wife steps out to grab coffee. Sure, many feel the guy's an overrated hack, but to me he's a guy who creates stories and characters with tons of heart. I like that. The fact that he focusses on story rather than some higher literary pursuits is fine by me, its not like i'm doing a BA or something after all. From Quesada's description of events however, it seems that King is basically to be a plotter on this series.

Not that i'm calling King or Marvel liars of course. Having re-read all the official stuff on this so far, nothing anywhere actually makes explicit mention of King actually writing for Marvel. But come on... it's what he does!

If you think i'm being overly fussy about what consitutes writing a comic, here's a few pages from Alan Moore's script for Batman: The Killing Joke. (in all fairness though, Moore is legend for verbose scripting)

UPDATE: Paul the-wrestling-blogger O'Brien has used his latest Article 10 column to comment on largely similar points, but with a little more eloquance and British verve.

Damn you Paul O' Brien...

clive — Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:13:00 +0200
Paul O' Brien writes the fantastic X-men review site, X-Axis and the also fantastic general comics editorial Article 10 for Ninth Art.

Lets say his writings are what one would expect from the British. Take an example from a Cerebus review: 'It's fair to say that most people's patience is going to be taxed by the grinding nine pages of small print in which Cerebus analyses Chapter 1 of Genesis sentence by sentence...'. Or from a X-Force review: '...Rob Liefeld fans, who almost by definition do not subscribe to conventional standards of quality...' (by the by, Dave Sim is a nut and his beliefs are too unbelievably stupid for me to bother getting into them ever)

Back to Mr O' Brien, then. Despite often not reading the actual subjects of said reviews themselves, i mostly enjoy them greatly. I've always suspected that i could appreciate them just because of a vague familiarity with the characters and settings (a good example of this would be the Cerebus review actually). So, when O' Brien started writing a non-comics blog, and claimed that most of his readership felt they'd be prepared (or might even prefer) to read non-comics related writing from him, i thought he might be patting himself on the back with just an ounce too much vigour.

I was wrong. Paul was right.

Despite my utter hatred for the... erm... sport of Pro Wrestling (Wrestlemania-esque stuff, not the legitimate sport), O' Brien has me at the edge of my only moderately comfortable seat with his reviews and commentaries on the goings on in the seedy world of pro wrestling. Again, they are insightful. O' Brien keeps an eye on both the techinal aspects of wrestler's skills as well as the ludicrous story arcs and characters that the 'writers' plug them into. Highly recommended reading, here, here, here and here. (UPDATE: and here)

(The rest of his blog's great too, by the way) (UPDATE: frigged about with the content in general a little in an attempt to make this post actually be worth reading)

A public service announcement...

clive — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:57:00 +0200
This is a sigil.

It is the f*** glyph. clivesdominion suggests that you use this sigil in one of two modes: 1) F*** YOU; or 2) F*** YEAH. never to be used as F*** ME. What's that? You think its just a cheapo stylized rendition of the word f*** using a low rent version of a LOTR rune alphabet? Huh? That what you thinking bastard guy? Huh? Well, you bastard guy. you sideways and you in the ing face while a donkey s you in the ing neck. And thats not a happy donkey. No, no. Thats a donkey that was hit by a Volvo doing 240km/h whilst crossing an autobahn in the mid-80's in a previous life time. The driver was listening to Bette Midler's You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings at the time. That donkey could a corpse straight across the Gobi desert without a water break.

See, i just did it. To you. You worthless asshole. And it felt spectacular. yeah. clivesdominion wishes you the same bliss.

Volk Van Main...

clive — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:44:00 +0200
KOBUS! is my favourite band in the country by quite a long way at the moment, and i don't see that changing any time soon (many thanks to Marcel for introducing me to their music earlier this year). I was very happy to find an interview with them (or at least one of them) on watkykjy.co.za. That's here. It's all in Die Taal so if that doesn't rub you up the right way, best you be moving right along then. In fact, its in a fairly impenetrable conversational style of Die Taal.

Staying on topic, i discovered that the bands website includes each of the guys giving a song-by-song breakdown of their last album, 100% Skuldgevoelvry. It's all quite short, but i appreciate this kind of behind the scenes stuff very very much and enjoyed reading this thouroughly. That'd be here. Again, in Die Taal.

Going slightly off topic, i was surprised to discover that Springbok Nude Girls have reformed this year sometime, now as a 6 piece, with the intention of releasing new music (for those who don't know, half of KOBUS! is Theo Crous of SNG). Serial, check it out here, near the bottom. But i stopped listening to radio a few years ago, so maybe everyone else who would care already knows about this. Not too sure about this. Kind of hard for me to imagine what SNG might actually do right now, with certain members profiles having moved higher and/or in different directions and all. Anyway, time will tell. Over and out.

A more innocent time, pt. II...

clive — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:51:00 +0200
That aberration in the thumbnail is Beppo The Super-Monkey. Part of the Superman extended cast from the silver age era of DC Comics. For real. It eventually became a member of the League Of Super Pets.

Ah, the good old days.

(You can read more about Beppo The Super-Monkey and his friends here.)

I am a woman for Morello...

clive — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:21:00 +0200
i couldn't be bothered to write a review, but i just got my copy of Audioslave's Live In Cuba, and can tell you i was getting moist eyed from sheer happiness by track 3.

My only small complaint would be the over editing that is evident in all too many live music dvd's these days. But the music and the band and the atmosphere are unbelievable.

Where in the world is Zack de la Rocha?...

clive — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:45:00 +0200
Following getting that Audioslave DVD, i got to wondering what Zack de la Rocha was doing with his life. Just over 2 years ago he'd posted a song called March Of Death on his website as a free download, and a hip hop album was alledgely in the works. So, i checked his official site and it looks exactly the same as it did back 2 and a half years ago. Mmmmm... except the link to March Of Death doesn't work anymore. Which is a pity since it's a kicking track. You can still join the mailing list and view the lyrics of March Of Death, but that's it. And i'm not holding my breath for one of those mails. Checking his wikipedia page revealed little more, except that he's been involved on a smattering of tracks over the past few years. Most interesting was this mtv interview with Trent Reznor, where he briefly mentions working on 19 tracks with Zack de la Rocha that he (TR) felt 'turned out excellent' but there seems to be some uncertainty from de la Rocha (of these the only track that has surfaced is We Want It All that was on the album Songs and Artists That Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11).

And that's that then. The rest of RATM (now forming 3/4 of Audioslave) did suggest in the past that de la Rocha was the main reason that the band had released so little material and i remember reading a Tom Morello interview where he claimed that de la Rocha planned to take a 4 year hiatus from RATM following their covers album Renegades. But then he ended up leaving the band. Hopefully he figures out what to do with some of that Reznor material. Over and out.

On Maiden and cover changes - Pt I...

clive — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:34:00 +0200
How to write a lengthy yet uninformative post that no one will care about: something that's been an ass itch to me for a while, is how Iron Maiden retrospectively overalled some of their old album covers during the mid 90's in a George-Lucas-esque manouver. I've made some limp attempts to find the reasons and reactions behind these changes, but never really got anywhere. So i'll make stuff up and add a few 'hence' and 'ergo's so it all sounds official. Good, good... So, Maiden drastically changed 2 of their old album covers: Iron Maiden and No Prayer For The Dying. For the former they went to the lengths of having the artwork redone in its entirety, and for the latter they did a patch job.

For Iron Maiden, this became this. Some background: the first Maiden cover was done before the concept or look of their mascot Eddie had been finalised and was actually taken from an existing piece of art by Derek Riggs. Which is why it looks fairly far removed from the famous-ish 'final' version of Eddie. Possibly, enough people who mattered got it into their heads that it was a bad thing that this first album cover didn't depict the 'real' Eddie? Just guessing here. Another reason might be that they just thought the art was poor in its own right. That doesn't seem too likely somehow, but the band might very well think the cover misrepresents them to a degree. It tends to remind me of Johnny Rotten. Maybe they feel that image is part of the reason many people see the band's first album as somewhat of a punk-metal hybrid and maybe they got a little sick of that? Arg. That angle seems like a stretch, but Paul Di'Anno definitely does mention in his interview on the Early Days DVD that he liked the punk feeling of that image. Back to the 'real' Eddie issue, then. The new version of the cover is basically the exact same layout and composition as the old one, but with a revised Eddie and a painting style more in keeping with later album covers. Basically, the features (skin tone and texture, hair colour, nose detail, etc) are much closer to those of the established Eddie, but you have the same long facial shape, punk-ish hair style and come-sit-next-to-me expression as the original image. Bizarrely, you end up with something that looks sort of but not quite like Eddie.

My verdict: lame. That original cover is a part of the band's history. It's an essential stepping stone to how they arrived at their much-loved mascot. Also, it's a classic metal cover. Sure, it's not classic like Dark Side Of The Moon's cover or Led Zepellin I, but hey. It also shows the beginnings of how the band would use Eddie as a marketting device to an unprecedented degree, making it somewhat important in the history of popular music. And besides, its just a weird cool little picture. Thankfully, the band seem to have returned to the original as of a few years ago.

Continued in next post...

On Maiden and cover changes - Pt II...

clive — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:56:00 +0200

Continued from previous post... blah, blah, blah, Iron Maiden retrospectively overalled some of their old album covers, blah, blah, blah...

The cover art of No Prayer For The Dying was changed from this to this and remains so to this day. Sneaky, huh? Slapping a patch on it, removing the groundsman/graverobber/whatever dude, making the hand that was previously strangling him just be kind of grabbing at the air like that. And then zooming in a bit to make up for the dead space left by said dude's removal. Why, oh why, you might ask. One reason that comes to mind is that the band may have tried to remove some of the violence from their mascot. Eddie hasn't been depicted as being explicitely violent in quite a long time and when the Ed Hunter game was done, one of the conditions was that Eddie be a 'good guy' and not hurt people. Having said that, though, the implied violence in the Killers album cover is far more jarring and that has never been changed. Maybe the feeling was that seeing the dude's face and reaction to Eddie crosses some sort of line, making the effects of the violence more tangible. Who knows? Then again, the reason may lie with the quality of the image. In all honesty, its nothing special. Just look at the earlier album covers: stronger concept, better art. In fairness, Riggs probably deliberately aimed for a stripped down more basic image to go with the stripped down more basic sound of the album.

My verdict: meh. Didn't like the original, don't like the update. From an artistic point of view, taking an image with a fairly balanced layout, then removing a major element that occupied almost its entire right side, is going to upset said balance and layout quite severly. They've zoomed in on the image to lessen that problem, but the problem remains to some extent. Also, design-wise, they've removed what little concept the album cover had, making the entire image fairly pointless. In case you think the idea of Eddie errupting from a grave is decent, you're correct: Riggs already did that with the cover for Live After Death, which is a phenomenal piece of art.

And that's that for this 2 post extravaganza. I'm sure no one cares, but hey. Personally, i'm dead against this sort of thing as a matter of principle alone. Interestingly, though, novels and DVD's tend to have different cover artwork depending on which edition they are and where one lives (like such), and no one (including me) cares about that at all. But i'm not going there now. Over, out.

A brave new Tool...

clive — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:58:00 +0200

Look here. It's one of those Tool newsletter things. It's actually from back in August so it's a little dated, but let's focus on what really matters here. They're In The Studio. Recording. A New Album.

Ice caps melt notably, continents shift and Limp Bizkit rises and falls during the time between Tool albums, so this makes me very very happy.

(by the by: these Tool newsletters are not built for easy consumption)

I am polluting the internet...

clive — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:30:00 +0200

This probably comes across in my posts to some extent, but i currently don't derive a whole lot of pleasure from blogging. Actually, in some ways i'm even reluctant to label this site a blog - but it does fit quite easily into the basic definition of a blog, so it'd be futile and stupid to fight it, really. Anyway. I actually find it far more fulfilling to tinker about with the backend of the site. There's lot's still to do there and some of what's been done definitely needs a little rethinking, but i'm filled with a general god like power mad glee to see my little creation living and breathing, even if it is with unspectacular results. Having said that, i'm not blogging solely so that my backend has something to vomit onto the web. I do genuinely like hearing the sound of my own voice. See, i'm an asshole. Although, not quite to the same degree as those whom take joy in their belief that God wiped out New Orleans because of that city's high density of homosexual residents. Anyway, it's just that i find blogging to generally be an ass numbing slog. I've been considering that this probably has something to do with either the constrictive format of this site or the constrictive nature of the tone i've set with the content and subject matter of previous posts. Taking that former point first, i quite like the site and post layout, but there is a certain ridiculous formality to it that doesn't really lend itself well to slapping up thoughts in an impromptu manner. I mean, i first have to find a thumbnail picture, tool around with it in the GIMP, come up with a snappy heading. Knowing that this degree of effort lies ahead of me, i'm not really inclined to post anything that doesn't resemble a mini-essay. And who really wants to pass their free time typing up mini essays anyway? Which kind of leads into my tone of prior content point. I generally dislike day-in-the-life blogging, and blogging about blogging, so i've tended towards posting fairly randomly about things that interest me. And i've done so on a fairly inconsistent basis. This has resulted in a fair number of posts devoted to music and comics, for better or for worse. Although i kind of like those, i'm starting to feel that that alone may be a little lacking and some sort of posting about me might actually improve the situation. Even though i'm an asshole. Which, to an extent, is what this post is doing actually. So, we'll see how and if that goes. I'll also be bundling up little posts more. Kind of just a 'stuff' post now and again to keep things a little looser. No intro, argument, conclusion nonsense. I did more than enough of that during my half-decade of tertiary education. Anyway, thanks for reading the ramblings of an old man. You are part of a group that could fit into a single Volkswagon Beetle. Over and out.

Soiling the internet, new Fields, down with limbo...

clive — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 16:06:00 +0200

Some housekeeping, firstly: Paging. It is done. It needs some work, but it's here. Shiver and lurch in the brilliant luminescence of its glory. I'd been meaning to implement it for months now, actually. Turns out it took 2 evening's work to do. Mmmm. Hopefully, hitting this site won't be as much of a character building experience as it used to be.

I see Fields Of Nephilim have released a new CD, Mourning Sun. 2 days ago, in fact. I'd heard about it before, but kind of assumed it was one of those supposedly-under-development CD's that never gets finished, much less released, like Sisters Of Mercy (ahem), like Guns 'n Roses (ahem). Anyway, this being SA it'll probably take months to get here and cost a fortune when it does. Arg.

Lastly and leastly, i see the Catholic church will most likely be scrapping the concept of Limbo, so all those dead babies are finally set free. While i appreciate that Limbo was always considered more of a hypothesis than a fact of the church, one does get a strange tingly feeling when one hears the distinct pop/suck as a concept that has been supported to varying degrees for several centuries dissapears into the void. And that is all.

Taking it in the ear...

clive — Fri, 2 Dec 2005 11:12:00 +0200

I know what the most annoying sound in the world is. No, not those guys who're still doing the whazuuuup? thing after all these years and not that soul devouring blue fly thing people have on their cell phones. Actually, scratch that. I know what the second most annoying sound in the world is and it is the ringing of our office phone. The tone seems to have been somehow designed to maximise both discomfort and stress simultaneously. The problem is doubled by the fact that its a cordless, so both the handset and the base ring in unison. We discovered recently that we could actually change the ringtone. That was a wonderful day and a group of east European children in lederhosen and amusing hats started singing folk tunes in our parking lot out of sheer happiness. Only to discover that we had a range of equally annoying, equally high pitched tones to choose from. God help us, my esteemed co-worker currently has the thing ringing Jingle Bells. If he gets it ringing Auld Lang Syne around New Years i'm buying a fire arm. It also doesn't help that the phone calls we tend to receive on said phone always seem to be along the lines of: 'Hi, our server room just burnt down and it turns out our off-site backup facilty was destroyed by a freak meteor shower during the night. The CEO has friction taped a lump of plastique explosive to his four year old son Jean Pierre's forehead and is busy systematically throwing his office furniture out of his second story window into the parking lot below. How long do you think it'll be before you can get us back up and running?'.

(no disrespect to our clients, of course, its our job to solve their problems)

In other unrelated news, i got the new System Of A Down yesterday. I know both Mezmerize and Hypnotize have received a lot of negative to luke warm reviews, but i've enjoyed both thoroughly. I mean, i see where the nay sayers are coming from and to an extent i think they have a point. Yes, Serj Tankian is the superior singer and Daron Malakian is probably doing an unjustifiable amount of lead singing. Yes, there is an odd mixture of relentless riffs and pop melodies. Yes, some of the lyrics are leaning so far into quirky that they seem almost meaningless. But at the end of the day i'm enjoying these albums (a lot) and if that makes me a tone deaf wanker then so be it. And i've always been a sucker for vocal harmonies and tunes i can hum to myself in the bathroom anyway.

The gimmick of attaching the packaging of the 2 discs to create one big digipack doesn't really work though (unless i'm being an a-hole). The extra flap that's on Hypnotize doesn't fit into the booklet's slip cover on Mezmerize. The fit is just way too tight - they should have cut that bit on the Hypnotize cover slightly narrower. At least i assume that's what they meant for you to do with it. Anyway, auf wiederschauen.

Piss, vinegar, Lennon, llamas...

clive — Mon, 5 Dec 2005 11:36:00 +0200

I'm tired out of my mind and can't really justify it. The closest thing i did to living it up this weekend was catching an abnormally late showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Mock me all you want bastard guy, i'm too old and grumpy to care. No, i'm not doing a review. Just use your feelings about the previous movies as your compass.

Cool to see a judge is ripping into the police for shafting a 2002 triple murder case badly enough that he has to throw the case out of court. An event that seems unfortunately common. This article on IOL goes into that more. Too frustrating for me to comment further in anything resembling a civil manner unfortunately...

On a more positive note, i saw Napolean Dynamite this weekend. I had a strong suspicion i was flushing 20 ZA shekels down the toilet as i left the video store, but it turned out i loved it. Its just this unbelievably understated, arb, random, meandering movie that still manages to have enough heart to make you care. Or me at least.

And since i'd like to fill some space, here are some whimsical rock factoids for the day. Its sort of well known that Trent Reznor owns John Lennon's mellotron. Which means the same mellotron is being played on Marilyn Manson's Cryptorchid and the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever. Not that i honestly think Cryptorchid is in the same league as Strawberry Fields. In fact, Cryptorchid is in some ways not so much an actual song as one of those pieces that is used to further themes and create effect by juxtaposing lyrics against how they will later be used in the 'real' songs and such that one tends to find on concept albums. (Although, the combination of mellotron and voice effect on the 'Prick your finger, it is done...' bit still gives me shivers. Character flaw? You decide amigo)

Next factoid. Its become moderately common knowledge, but just in case you didn't know, Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle does the high pitched 'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin' vocal on Green Jelly's quasi classic Three Little Pigs (yes, i realise that the term 'classic' doesn't appreciate being spread that thin). He was room mates with the leader of Green Jelly whom was the same person who got the answering machine message that is used on Message To Harry Manback on Tool's album AEnema. Ya know the one: '...f*ck you, f*cking american, yankee, you're going to die out of cancer, i promise ...'. Considering that the world at large liked the US quite a bit more back then than it does now, i'm not too sure what sort of messages that gentleman is leaving these days. And i'm spent.

What i learned from Jonathan Davis today...

clive — Tue, 6 Dec 2005 18:41:00 +0200

I was having a look at Jonathan Davis' blog and came across this post from a few months back with him playing a fairly exotic looking instrument called a glass armonica. I'd never heard of the instrument before so i thought i'd try Googling for the thing. I was relieved to discover that the instrument is alledgedly quite rare, so it wasn't quite like discovering that i'd never heard of a banjo before. And it was invented by Benjamin Franklin, whose other inventions include bifocals and the lightning rod. This site has a Flash-based virtual armonica thing that gives a decent idea of what the thing sounds like (accompanied by an unbelievably poor graphic representation, as is the Flash way).

Davis alludes to other weird instruments that will appear on the new Korn album. If i was a betting man, i might suggest that these would include the ever present bag pipes. That aside, Davis' blog is mainly interesting for the odd shot of Korn in the recording studio with very brief behind the scenes information. As much as a sucker as i am for behind the scenes stuff on bands, Davis' more general posts require a degree of interest in his life that i cannot even imagine having.

In case you're wondering, i do find this topic (the glass armonica, that is) less interesting than the length of this post might suggest.

Two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside...

clive — Wed, 7 Dec 2005 17:31:00 +0200

This odd thing is Epiphone's Trailer Park Troubadour Airscreamer. Yes, it is meant to be shaped like the side view of a trailer. Yes, it really does have a chrome finish to further blur the fine line between this guitar and actual trailers.

In all fairness, i feel a little bad for calling the thing ugly. Or at least for calling it ugly in a negative way. I mean, there's something to be said for a creation that is so gratuitously repugnant, so decadently free falling into poor taste, which then has the audacity to be mass produced. It's almost, dare i say, hella cool.

That aside, i actually happen to own an Epiphone guitar. Being a conservative man, i avoided the quirks of the Trailer Park Troubadour in preference of something a tad more sedate. I really enjoy playing the thing. Well, i'm an utterly worthless guitarist, but i enjoy myself within those parameters. (i think of myself officially as a bassist, although i'm only slightly less worthless at doing that). And i had a moment of insanity that inspired me to get the model with the Floyd Rose gadgetry (no, not real FR). Let me say that unless you are exceptional passionate about tremelo wanking all the live long day and such, i would not recommend going this route. Ever. I'm so tempted to just glue a block of cork or something in behind the bridge. Anyway, enough about my arseness.

When the levee breaks...

clive — Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:44:00 +0200

Robert Mugabe is a crazy crazy bastard. Or at least, i'm assuming he must be. Unless, of course, i have been subjected to a particularly thorough propaganda campaign designed to soil the good Mugabe name. While this may well be the case, i somehow doubt it. I'm referring (this time) to Robert Mugabe's rejection of the UN's offer of tents as temporary shelter for Zimbabwe's legions of homeless citizens. According to Mugabe, Zimbabweans '... are not a tents people. We believe in houses.' Indeed they do. As you may recall, President Robert Mugabe's powerful feelings about Zimbabwean housing culminated in Operation Restore Order, which led to the demolition of an enormous number of homes that the government alledgedly found unsatisfactory for whatever reasons, jacking up the homeless figure of the country to somewhere around 700000 in the process. It is fairly amazing to see the Zimbabwean government lashing out at the UN for their lack of a long term solution when they themselves clearly weren't paying too much consideration to the future of their people when they went about demolished their homes. I'm not really much of an expert on money and finances and stuff, but i can imagine far far wealthier nations than Zimbabwe balking at the prospect of having to scramble to build houses sufficient to accomodate 700000 people, *after* their current dwellings had been destroyed and they were left stranded. Or am i over simplifying this situation somehow? I'm open to any information that would shed some light on Robert Mugabe's actions here, should i be badly misinterpreting something. This article goes into these issues at greater length (in addition to being less biased than i am).

As for my own experiences, i've only been to Zimbabwe twice, both occasions being around 10 years ago. Its a really great place. In some ways it was like going back to what i imagine South Africa was like in the 70's in terms of interiors of shops, packaging of products and that sort of thing. You'd also find that the same brands wouldn't necessarily imply the same contents: i specifically recall that both Coca Cola and Cadbury's chocolates tasted just that bit noticably different from what they did in SA. Also, at the time i found it hella banana republic that EVERY shop had to have a standard portrait of Robert Mugabe hanging on the premises, whether it be a coffee shop, a tour guide or an OK Bazaars. And i remember a phenomenally cold night's camping in Harare. At that time tourism was big and the currency was sitting at around 2.20 Zim Dollars to the mighty mighty SA Rand. With the events of recent years and the massive drop in their currency's value, i'm not all that sure how anybody in the country can actually buy anything. On a more sentimental note, my grandfather is buried in Zim, in a modest graveyard in the shadow of the huge power station at Hwange. He passed away when my dad was around 6 years old, long before the war, just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, i'm not really built for the task of selling you on Zimbabwe's beauty. Waxing lyrical isn't really a strong point of mine. But the country deserves a whole lot better than what its getting at the moment (no matter how much Thabo Mbeki insists we as South Africans can learn from Robert Mugabe). I sincerely hope no one interprets this as some petty racially motivated white-man-criticises-black-leader kind of thing. That is certainly not my intention. My concern is that Robert Mugabe is not doing right by ALL of his people and secondarily that his actions are negatively impacting the entire Southern African region.

Defacator extraordinaire, they all float a little later...

clive — Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:12:00 +0200

The Attack Of the Mad Sh*tter by Paul T. Riddell. You don't get much better article names than that. What makes the name even better, though, is that it is actually for an article that's literally about a mad sh*tter. Now how much more awesome do your think your life is going to get than that, huh? I remember the first time i read this thing. It has a fairly lengthy build up, but at some point, say a third of the way in, it just hit a critical inertia of mad shitting and i was just crying with laughter up from then on in. For real. Actual tears and all. The article seemed to have fallen off the web for a while after Riddell turfed his site, but some people have charitably made his work available again online. I was looking forward to the re-read, but it turned out i was a little dissapointed. The article is still definitely amusing, just not quite as insane as i remembered it being. Maybe my sense of humour drifted in some other direction in the mean time or maybe its just one of those things that really relies on the impact of the first reading. But its still a good read and dammit, i really really hope its as true a story as the Riddell would have us believe.

Moving right along then. Following up on a post from a while back, Stephen King and Marvel have announced that the first Dark Tower based comic book miniseries will be shifting roughly a year down the timestream. To February 2007. This move was apparently made since King's having a fairly busy 2006 and he doesn't want this project falling through the cracks (odd, considering important guys like King tend to have their schedules mapped out quite far in advance). The same press release also clarifies King's role on the project, that being 'executive editor'. Interesting. 'Executive editor' sounds suspiciously like one of those meaningful sounding yet incredibly vague positions that one might like to give a celebrity. (okay, i'm being a touch over cynical, here's the wikipedia definition)

Anyway, plenty of people are suddenly expressing great dissapointment that Stephen King won't actually be the writer of the series. That's understandable, but they really needed to pull their heads out of their asses a while ago since this definitely isn't news. Actually, since King has provided detailed plots and is doing the general sheperding and approval duties of executive editing, i'm a little surprised Marvel isn't trying to bill this project as being at least co-written by King. I'm pretty sure they've given people co-writer credits for similar levels of participation in the past. Whatever. I'm just hoping at least part of the reason for pushing the series back a year is because King has decided to take a more active role and needs more time to do that.

And lastly, i mentioned a while back that System Of A Down's Mezmerize/Hypnotize albums had drawn a fair amount of negative to luke warm reaction. Well, here's an unbelievably positive review by... wait for it... mtv. m t dingo ramming v. I find the love/hate relationship that mtv has with heavier music fairly interesting. On the one hand, they tend to cram heavier bands into some ungodly 4-in-the-morning-on-a-sunday slot when they show them at all. On the other, there seems to be some larger than life, over the top rock 'n roll splendour in heavy music that they can't do without. Anyway. Some might also argue that mtv's enthusiasm for SOAD is due to the band's sound becoming more commercial. Who knows. Mezmerize/Hypnotize definitely feels a lot more commercial to me, but they're still fairly heavy when you take just the music into account. Either way, i'm liking it. And its certainly heavier than the daytime-radio-panderers like Creed that get passed for heavy music these days. So i know nothing. Nothing at all.

Eddie Vedder stole my baby...

clive — Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:35:00 +0200

Looking back on an earlier version of this site, i came across a rant i did on 30 May of the year 2004 of our lord concerning what Moby had labeled as 'The Pearl Jam Effect'. I'd considered just reposting that old thing verbatim, but it turned out to be quite piss-poor on a re-read, so i'll post about posting it instead.

Basically, i'd been doing a google search for Pearl Jam album sales (because that's the kind of thing losers do with their spare time) and came across this chunk of Moby thoughts. Unfortunately, he's turfed those old weather worn parts of his site so you won't find his actual entry anymore. But, a quick google search shows that many many sites still refer to it. Anyway, at that particular time i was intrigued by just what Moby might think would constitute a Pearl Jam Effect.

Basically, he felt that he, Moby - in much the same way as Pearl Jam - had experienced diminishing album sales leading up to that time due to the general technological superiority of his (and their) fans. In other words, he felt that large numbers of his fans possessed the skills and verve to download songs and burn CD's. His specific example of an artist whose fans were too mentally challenged to wipe away the dribble from their chins and download a few MP3's was... Pink. Anyway, i recall the main thrust of his argument beyond this point was that record labels should take this effect into account when considering the popularity of various acts.

So. Well. My biggest concern at the time was how it was that Moby came to the conclusion that Pearl Jam stood out as the very epitome of bands with predominantly computer literate followings? And i still don't get it. If anything, i'd rather expect someone to make that sort of assumption with regards to a somehow electronic band (say for instance Nine Inch Nails). I was and still am tempted to think that he used Pearl Jam as an example simply because they once sold albums in mind shattering early-Back-Street-Boys-esque quantities and at that time were no longer doing so (the trend of sagging Pearl Jam album sales continues to the present day sadly. god i love that band so much).

Personally, if i was to coin a term like 'Pearl Jam Effect', i'd use it to refer to a once enormously popular band that has to cope with outliving the fad it helped create. Which is actually something that i reckon Korn has been wrestling with for quite a few years now. That also happens to form the basis for a far more interesting discussion than: 'my fans are cleverer than Britney's and Pink's' don't you think? Stick with the old sound and you're passe, move into some new sound and 'the true fans' fans think you're abandoning them. Take Pearl Jam's Binaural where they seemed to try something a little different - everyone seems to think its the utter lowpoint of Pearl Jam's output, but i think its their best album along with Vitalogy. Also, they keep getting their sales figures compared to those from the glory days. You get people complaining that an album 'only' sold a million copies. Anyway, it's Friday afternoon so i'm not feeling overly inclined to plough into this in any greater detail right now. Over. Out.

Hating it here then and now...

clive — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 10:17:00 +0200

Again, i'll be reliving my past inglorious glories by reposting something from that mythical prior version of this site. This is from the time of the previous national SA elections. Basically i was pissed off that prisoners were being allowed to vote. Beyond that, i was pissed off that perpetrators of violent crimes were being allowed to vote. Basically, convicted thieves, murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc were given the oppurtunity to help influence the future of this country's leadership.

This article, was really enough to make me shit out a lung. Particularly, the inspirational tale of a 45 year old man who '...raped a woman three years ago and was sentenced to 15 years. He was one of 215 maximum security prisoners who registered to vote on Wednesday after the Constitutional Court's recent ruling allowing all prisoners to vote on April 14. [He] believed even before his incarceration that prisoners should not be denied the right to vote, "no matter what they did". "I have to consider my future, because in 13 years I will leave here". I am a citizen also. I am a human being. I have to consider my future, because in 13 years I will leave here." "I am very pleased to have the opportunity to vote. I think it makes prisoners feel like members of society," he said.'

Uhu. F*ck him. Then and now. Prisoners aren't meant to feel like members of society. Prison exists to remove criminals from society. Further, as i said back when i originally posted this thing, as a rapist, this guy may well be a citizen, but I find his claim to be a human being lacking. That aside, my opinion, if the government wants to do something nice for prisoners they can give them better food, cells that aren't overcrowded and a proper place to take a dump.

Anyway, that was then... we'll see what the government dreams up for the next elections.

(incidentally, for the purists out there, the photo in the thumbnail is of a prison in isreal, not a local one)

Die 2005, die...

clive — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 09:17:00 +0200

I'm in the Canada of Australia at the moment, so no posting for a while. But, compliments of whatever season your beliefs dictate. And if you don't have any beliefs, hope you have a good couple of days off. Next year then.

Do you come from a land down underer...

clive — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 07:48:38 +0200

Aloha. I've been mentally preparing for the first blog of this year 2006 of our lord since its first minute. Honest. But this first blog has been slow in happening. For one thing, i was out of the country and thought i'd rather spend my time with human beings than computers. For another, i've moved servers and have been busy with all the usual things that this entails. And then there's my Tom Welling clone.

Anyway, there were a bunch a things i wanted to blog at length about, but that was when i still possessed the will to f*cking live. Incidentally, whilst moving the contents of my blog over to the aforementioned new server, i noticed i've been leaning on the old f*ck crutch quite excessively in the past few months. My bad. Poor form on my part. In the spirit of producing a website that i wouldn't be ashamed to have my mother read and in the added spirit of exhibiting an above-neanderthal command of the English language, 'nads of baphomet' will be my new all purpose profanity.

But i digress... Much of the positive spirit and glowing joy with which i entered '06 has already been eroded quite heavily by repeated rounds of the prison shower hokey pokey that have been coming my way thick and fast (pun, what pun?) in the last 2 weeks. But enough with the negative. I spent this christmas/new years season in singapore a little and in new zealand a lot. Both countries are beautiful and amazing in entirely different ways. In singapore, we did the hotel thing, but in new zealand we experienced the enormous hospitality of my girlfriend Lize's family. Big big thanks to Johan, Estelle, Maryke and Jeanne Barnard.

I could write more. And will. By the nads of baphomet, i've now seen volcanoes after all. But right now i'd just like to post something and anything before February.

Gee raat china...

clive — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:57:14 +0200

Okay, i totally missed the boat on this, but KOBUS! is making a live album available via their website, one track at a time. It's a funky idea, they're basically making a bunch of free tracks available that will constitute the album Main Str. Also, since both Theo Crous and Francois Blom seem to be geared up to record/mix/produce professional quality stuff from home, this is presumably costing them nothing but time and bandwidth fees. Time of course often being more valuable than it at first seems. Fair enough, calling it an album might be a bit of a stretch, but i'm not too good for free music... especially not free music that i actually like. Unfortunately, they're already up to track 6, Gee Raat Live 2002 (which was meant to have been taken down 6 days ago actually, according to the message on their home page), so the nads of baphomet alone know which of your chommies might possess tracks 1 through 5.

By the way, in case i didn't make this clear in the above paragraph, this is hella cool and all bands should do this kind of thing.

(if you're unfamiliar with the band's music, Gee Raat is representative of their jokier side, but they have other sides also)

Rocky horror...

clive — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:24:39 +0200

I know the experts out there will think me silly, but dietary-supplement-plebs like myself just can't help giggling when faced with a product name like: 'Stallone High Protein Pudding'.

And just in case you had any doubts, yes, its that Stallone.

Off he went...

clive — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:33:42 +0200

Was listening to Pearl Jam's Off He Goes just a few minutes ago. Isn't it just the saddest song? Well to me it is, anyway. Kind of makes me think of a really good friend of mine i haven't seen in a few years. Not quite the same situation as in the song, but kind of the same feeling. I'll never forget a 2 week period at the tail end of the 90's during which all our actions seemed to be subtly coloured by a Mail & Guardian poster. One of those ones on the lamp posts. It was a blurb about Nostradamus' prediction of a comet hitting the earth at around that time. Ominous bugger, that piece of cardboard was. You know how it is, when you know that something is the most utter shit, but there's still that nagging 'hey, but what if...?' gnawing at the back of your head. And we were walking past that thing at least 4 times a day. We eventually conquered it by taking a ludicrous photo late on the night before the alledged collision, of us shaking our fists defiantly at the sky whilst standing in front of the significant lamp post. Great things are possible when you're young and a moron. You can thank either one of us for saving the world next time you run into us. Wherever you are, I miss you Mr Conners.

On a less melancholy yet still marginally related note, i came across this very cool site on the gear Pearl Jam was using around the time of Riot Act. There are signal flow diagrams and q&a's and stuff from one of the band's technicians, so its abnormally information laden. Cool if you're into that sort of thing. But you aren't... are you?

Very well then. How about this... during that same time, the M&G also had one of those lamp post boards reading something like: 'Woman's horror as nipple falls off'

Back In Black Francis...

clive — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:46:37 +0200

William Shatner was voted a while back as having done the worst cover of a Beatles' song ever. It's for a fairly striking version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (hear it with a cool fan video here). Then, as now, Shatner doesn't sing but rather does a kind of stylised lyrical speaking thing. The difference being that his recent Has Been album is actually kind of cool, whereas his LSD is a bit of an unfocused mess. Still, you might argue that his version is more interesting than uber-faithful covers of Beatles songs. Denny Crane. I mean, how many really cool or at least uncheesy Beatles covers are there? By far the best one that comes to mind (despite me not overly liking the song or the artist) is Joe Cocker's cover/reinvisioning of With A Little Help From My Friends. He (and/or whoever helped him rearrange the thing) took a quirky little Ringo tune and turned it into this massive anthem for a generation. And a theme for The Wonder Years. I wonder if i'd still like the show if i saw it today? I suspect not. And remember: Marilyn Manson *isn't* Winnie Cooper.

And now, comics. Run to the hills, run for your lives. Brian Wood is doing some really great series at the moment, including Local (ONI) and DMZ (Vertigo). Local is what one might call typical of indie comics, a cool slice-of-life book, set in a different (usually) small town each issue. Each issue is self contained and to varying degrees focuses on the activities of central(ish) character Megan. And it has great b&w art by Ryan Kelly. The most recent, issue 3, actually focused on a aging band coming home. Its a fantastic piece of story telling, where you can really sense the shape of the untold story lurking just outside the printed pages. It also made me wonder if i'll ever be in a band again... and how my crankiness will deal with the ludicrous inter-personal politics of band life. If that sounds like your bag, you can download a PDF preview of issue 1 here. DMZ is also great but i'll leave that for later. (By the by, Local has a work blog here and DMZ has one here)

Lastly and mostly, you can get a mondo super cool live acoustic version of Caribou by the Pixies here. Its from one of the shows from their tour last year. They're all getting on a bit (Frank Black in particular is looking like the dude from King Of Queens), but it would appear that they still have it. Hella cool.

Another great day for mankind...

clive — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 11:46:57 +0200

I've updated the look of the site... again... and i like it. I was only planning to change the banner, since it had a picture of me with long hair in it and i shaved it off about 5 months ago (btw, i made the prudent decision to no longer include myself in said banner). But the banner i came up with didn't look good with the rest of the site. And since i hated the rest of the site, that seemed as good a time as any to go around changing stuff. Sterling.

I've also added a programming blog, the Off By One Blog. If Patrick Swayze is smiling upon me it may attract a larger audience than this here Bordello.

Okay, here's my quote of the day from this CHUD article: 'There's a pretty palpable Garden State backlash out there. To those people, I can only implore: "Please... please! Go f*** yourself."'. Amen. Love the movie.

Over, out.

clive vs. television...

clive — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 10:56:02 +0200

I watched a pseudo documentary on 9/11 yesterday. No, i have no idea how that happened. These days i try to avoid 9/11 retrospectives like the plague. Mostly because of how those tragic events have been twisted to push certain agendas. Of course, i also watched an episode of The Apprentice that i also swore i was not going to watch under any circumstances. So maybe last night was just an evening of weak will and corroded will power as far as television was concerned. On the other hand, there were mitigating factors in both instances.

Apprentice had the moron contestants trying to come up with toy concepts for Mattel. Being someone pushing the 30-year-old mark, i can tell you that Mattel did a lot to brighten up my childhood. Particularly with Masters Of The Universe. Which got me to thinking, do children actually still play with those sorts of toys? Where they orchestrate the ongoings of an army of heroes and villains and actually use there imaginations and stuff. I don't know anyone with children in that sort of age range, but i somehow suspect not. Or, at the very least, i suspect they purge themselves of these sorts of toys at a far younger age. These days, all i see is children with PSP's and iPods and cellphones. Which kind of strikes me as really wrong. On the other hand, maybe some little dude (or dudette) playing something like Warcraft is just a natural extension of me rambling about the lounge with the adventures of He-Man. Anyway, it was nice to get some very small insight into how the mighty Mattel does what it does.

As for the 9/11 show, i don't have as much of an idea how i ended up watching that. Maybe i just like the idea of watching BBC productions. Maybe listening to British accents soothes me and makes me feel more intelligent. I don't know. It was a bit of an odd show really... they basically followed the events in flight 11 (the first plane to be hijacked) from take off to its sad end. They did this by roughly following and speculating on the actions of one of the pilots, two of the flight attendants, one passenger whom by chance was previously an Isreali soldier and one lady working in the Towers. And also the hijackers. Its certainly a well enough made show and presents the timeline of events in a far clearer way than i'd previously known them. So that's cool. But the speculation slightly dilutes the documentary's value. Or at least i thought it did. For instance, how much value is there in telling us that a woman most likely went to a deli that morning because she did so most mornings and further speculating on what she might have bought for her morning breakfast? (not that this makes her fate any less tragic, of course).

Anyway, i intend to exercise a little more discretion concerning what i allow to eat away my brain this weekend. Over, out.

Mysteries of the buff Trent Reznor...

clive — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:58:35 +0200

I've come to like constants in my rapidly passing life and this new look of Trent Reznor's is doing me no good. For the most part, Reznor has always been a scrawny guy, often having longish hair. For a while before The Fragile he was sporting what cannot easily be more briefly described than to call it a 'Jesus look' (he looks like that in the Perfect Drug video). But for the most part, this is generally what i think of when i think of Trent Reznor (or, this).

So, what then is this creature? Reznor is looking solid, if not stumpy, with muscle (here's another). My mind is falling apart trying to process this.

(Incidentally, check this out from the live photos on the NIN site - totally excellent - no idea what gives a man that kind of lift, but *that* right there is what rock 'n roll is all about)

Weiland vs. Axl vs. Slash...

clive — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:02:19 +0200

It irritates me that Scott Weiland basically only ever uses the Velvet Revolver site to attack people whom are bad mouthing him in the media. Not that i don't think he has a right to defend himself publicly, i'd just be more open to his (admittedly valid) complaints if every once in a while he'd make some or other positive comment.

Having said that, though, his most recent rant is far more entertaining than the usual, since it's a direct attack on his current bandmates' former lead singer, one Mr W. Axl Rose. Before going into that, however, here's a little context. Slash and Duff sued Axl back in 2005 (it has something to do with rights or royalties to something or other Guns n' Roses related). This lawsuit prompted Rose to launch a counter suit. And also to issue this press release, attacking Slash, his and Duff's lawsuit and general past behavior and claims (read more about that here).

This press release is what Weiland's latest rant is referring to and Weiland seems to be particularly infuriated by Rose's claim that Slash showed up at his house one night and confided in him that Weiland was 'a fraud', he 'hates' Matt Sorum and Duff is 'spineless'. Weiland's response goes quite a bit beyond the realms of gentlemanly behavior. For instance, the rather striking opening: 'Get in the ring. Go to the gym, motherf***er, or if you prefer, get a new wig, motherf***er. I think I'll resist the urge to 'stoop' to your level. Oh s***, here it comes, you fat, botox-faced, wig-wearin' f***! O.K., I feel better now.' (You can't deep link into the Velvet Revolver site, but here's Weiland's open letter as hosted on another site.)

These claims certainly provide some superficial points of interest. You may know that Axl Rose became extremely reclusive after GNR split and that he generally hadn't been seen in years. Rumours were rife that he'd gotten bald and fat. Not that that's the end of the world, of course, one day i'll be bald and fat too. So, many were surprised when he re-emerged a few years ago looking pretty much the same as he did before (like so). So, Weiland's claims may suggest that Mr Rose may not be looking quite so tip-top during those periods of recluse.

Anyway, like i said, all superficial. What i found more interesting were the claims of the lack of Axl's creative input into GNR songs... Weiland: 'Your unoriginal, uncreative little mind - the same mind that had to rely on its bandmates to write melodies and lyrics. Who's the fraud now, bitch?' Axl is definitely credited as writing and co-writing many many GNR songs, so i'm not too sure exactly what Weiland's getting at here. Was Rose charitably credited on songs, or does he just mean that Rose didn't always write his lyrics and melodies? If its the latter, that's actually not totally uncommon. In some bands the vocalist specifically always writes the vocals and melodies, while in others whoever happens to have written the song writes them. Nothing too non-standard there. Also, it is said to be Rose's creative influence on the Illusion albums that moved them away from the earlier sound on Appetite For Destruction. So. i'm not totally sure about that part of it. However, i'd have to say that Rose's actions post original GNR leave me inclined to put more stock in Weiland's claims than his. People with an abundance of creative energy often don't take 10 years to release an album. But, who knows?

Of course, the feeling is that the new GNR album is finally going to be released soon, so maybe this is all just tactical publicity garnering nonsense. Which would be kind of cool in a way, it's been a while.

The pipeline, it runneth over...

clive — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:12:53 +0200

It would seem that, for whatever reason, May 2 is one of those special days. That's when both the new Pearl Jam and the new Tool albums are to be released. Pearl Jam's is eponymous and Tool's is called 10,000 Days.

Tool's site has the tracklisting for 10,000 Days up. Not to sound ungrateful, but the fuss people make about getting the tracklistings for albums ahead of time always amazes me. I know that the new Tool album will feature a song called Vicarious... what have i gained? I'm excited out of my mind that they've got something coming out and coming out soon... there is just very little more that track names will add to that.

As for Pearl Jam, i'm assuming their site must have featured the new album cover at some point, since it made its way onto their wikipedia page, but the official site currently features the album cover wrapped in brown paper. For some reason. The wikipedia page reveals that this will most likely be my least favourite Pearl Jam cover ever... a cut down the middle avocado pear... mmm... but as long as the music's good, and i'm absolutely sure it will be, i don't really care. Not at all. Of course, self titled albums sometimes get given some token name based on cover art, probably the best example being Metallica's Black album. The prospect of hearing someone say, 'Dude, have you picked up the Pearl Jam Avacado album yet?' is enough to make me want to kill myself. Anyway. Apparently, this album sees Pearl Jam returning to more of a Vs. era sound. That's cool if it's true, but i don't really mind either way, since i liked the last few albums plenty.

As an aside, Iron Maiden also have a new album coming. But not on May 2nd. They've already scheduled the tour dates to support the album, but not the actual album's release date. Having confirmed that the album will be released ahead of the tour, this would imply that the album will be released sometime before or at the beginning of northern hemisphere winter. Cool.

(UPDATE: aah, farewell sweet wallet, May also sees the release of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium... and it's a double album)

Television vs. clive...

clive — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:46:42 +0200

This time last weak i'd mentioned that i'd watched The Apprentice and a British 9/11 documentary in an extended moment of weakness. I almost managed to resist the call of Mr Trump this week... well, i did for the most part, anyway. I caught the last 15 minutes of it, and dammit, i was entertained. This dissapoints me, since i'd really hoped i wasn't the kind of person whom enjoyed The Apprentice. But, it turns out, i like watching the contestants gasping for air, engaging in petty squabbles and just generally buggering everything up. I also find that i quite enjoy Donald Trump's shamelessly-richer-than-God attitude. Grumble. I still intend to endeavour not to make this a habit. (By the by, here's Paul O'Brien's fairly interesting review of the British version of the show, comparing it to the US version)

Once Apprentice had scrolled it's filth off my tv set, i discovered that the 9/11 thing i'd watched last week is actually part of a BBC series (well, it's British, so let's say it's BBC) where they recreate the timeline of the pivotal events of some tradgedy. Last night's one was on the Chernobyl disaster and was light years better than the 9/11 one. The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986 when i was around 8 years old and although i very clearly remember it being a big deal, i realised that i didn't really know much about what had really happened there. I had no idea that it actually stemmed from a test gone wrong and had a lot to do with egos and fears of job security. So i enjoyed the show very much. I think a big benefit to the quality of the show is that history has had a chance to mature with regards to the disaster. While we (the public) don't know much more about 9/11 than we did within a week of it happening, Chernobyl happened 20 years ago. So, there are films from the site after the disaster and KGB information that's been declassified, since that time. Also, the breakdown in the Soviet Union has probably helped make a lot of information available. The show was able to illustrate flaws in the reactors' design, for one thing. All in all, this was a really scary thing to watch. The idea that all this actually happened is quite unbelievable. Also, the idea that the radiation is going to be affecting a big chunk of the world for a good few more decades. The idea that even if you don't live up the road from a reactor, you're still not necessarily all that much safer in the case of a disaster. This thing we call Progress.

(UPDATE: wikipedia Chernobyl Accident page; UPDATE II: the show i've been on about is called Zero Hour)

1 Day & counting, and a little site news...

clive — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:38:00 +0200

Later tomorrow i'll be seeing one of my favourite bands ever. That's quite a strange feeling when you live in SA and one of the constants in the universe you can rely on is that your favourite bands never ever come here. To be honest, it actually feels too unreal for me to even be properly excited about it at this stage. Until misters Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and Trujilo are on that stage and the first note is played, i'm assuming this is all just a cruel joke.

Onto the less significant site related news, i've added - wait for it - yet another blog! This one's dedicated to my meagre drawing abilities and replaces the old worthless image dumping ground i used to have. For now, i'm calling it the Scribble Log. It's just images with a little bit of background information into why they suck or suck less and what i might have had in mind. Sure, normally only famous or stupendously talented people can justify doing this sort of thing, but what the hey, i like the sound of my own voice.

And while i'm going on about my meagre talents, i've done a new banner for the www.sadeveloper.net website. No one seems to hate it so far. I even quite like it myself.

Over, out.

Life after Metallica...

clive — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 07:25:58 +0200

Yes, Metallica were amazing. I don't think anyone really thought they wouldn't be, really. But they were amazing all the same. And they played pretty much every Metallica song that i'd ever dreamt of seeing them do live, including For Whom The Bell Tolls, One, Master Of Puppets, Fade To Black, Sad But True, And Nothing Else Matters and most surprisingly Seek And Destroy. Overall i counted their set to be 17 songs long (including the 3 encores, one of which actually seemed genuinely unplanned). Anybody who was expecting a wall-to-wall mosh pit or a setlist comprised completely from the Black album may have been dissapointed, but they were delusional to begin with. Dream come true.

(Unfortunately, the organisational aspects concerning food and drinks were absolutely abysmal. There were people standing for hours in queues all over the place and everywhere seemed to run out of everything. I'm looking at you Coca Cola and 5FM...)

[UPDATE: Metallica are *rumoured* to record a new album, starting July. What they have confirmed, however, is that the album will be produced by Rick Rubin and, thank god, not Bob Rock. If this all turns out to be true, it will ironically have made last year's April Fool's joke become a reality.]

[UPDATE II: as old-good-friend Bernard reminded me a few weeks back, great as Metallica was, Sepultura at the Newtown Music Hall still holds as the best live show i've ever seen. Even zonder Max]

The Henry Rollins Show...

clive — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 11:25:57 +0200

CHUD has a cool interview with Henry Rollins (lees hom hier china). It deals with his new talk show The Henry Rollins Show as well as his participation in the USO, his feelings about the US's activities in the middle east and how he became a person of interest in Australia.

My general political inclinations happen to lie in the same ballpark as those of Rollins, but i do think he presents his views in an eloquent and balanced enough fashion that someone who feels differently shouldn't have a seisure whilst reading this. I particularly liked reading his thoughts about supporting the US troops despite not supporting the war and how this has led him to take part in the USO and his interaction with some of the troops then and since.

Television defeats clive...

clive — Mon, 3 Apr 2006 10:35:03 +0200

I've given up trying to defeat television. If i'm home when The Apprentice is on and if i remember that it's actually on, i am going to watch it. And i will like it. Initially i'd vowed not to watch the show largely because i disliked the type of people who took part in it, but i've now realised that this is specifically what i like about the show. I can just happily watch people i don't care about at all screwing up and enjoy it thouroughly. No pesky emotional connections or any rooting for teams or anything like that. And i can watch The Donald strut about like he's God. Which is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. I am weak but i don't care. 40 minutes less that i have to think every week, after all.

If you're filled with wonder, my entire life isn't consumed by my half hearted battle against television. I've been reading a bit lately. The last couple of books i've read were Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Michael Marshall Smith's Spares, Gaiman's Ananzi Boys and Smith's Only Forward. I enjoyed all of them and would recommend them with little or no reservation. Sorry, i'm not much of a one for reviewing so that's as much as you'll get out of me.

Following those listed above, i temporarily ran out of new books and books i felt inclined to re-read. So right now, i'm re-reading Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan. It's about as fine as comics get in my ever so humble opinion. I've got just under 20 of the 60 issues left to go, after which i'll be diving into Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books.

Go watch some tv. It'll make you feel wonderful. Over, out.

Read this now: Jake Mansworth...

clive — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 08:50:54 +0200

You need to stop watching Xena Warrior Princess reruns RIGHT NOW and read this. Hell, i stopped working on my Tom Welling clone to check it out. Mind you, depending on the sheer octane of conservatism exacted by your employers, you might want to leave it for home. But it's my *Best* *Thing* *Ever* for today.

It's a strip called Jake Mansworth by Chip Zdarsky, and is part of the Act-i-vate group comics blog (i've deliberately left out part of the title since it's hella funny). Everything else on Act-i-vate is very cool too of course and you'd do yourself a favour by checking it out.

(UPDATE: here's another... and another... fairly nsfw)

Back in the hood...

clive — Wed, 3 May 2006 07:46:48 +0200

I spent two days of the past long weekend in Port Elizabeth, the city where i did my growing up (8-24yrs). People are quick to diss the place, but how about this view? I was blown away when i opened my hotel room curtains to that sight at around 7 in the morning (aka, the sparrowsh*ts). That was 10 stories up over Kings Beach. Hanging myself a little out the window, the view looked kind of like this.

A few weeks earlier, another work related trip took me back to my city of birth, Cape Town. That hotel window presented me with a view of the mountain as it is seen from Montague. PE was better. (It was also windy like a mother, but that's to be expected) In all honesty, i'd have trouble re-adjusting to the PE lifestyle right now, and most of my friends have moved, but i still think its a great place. No, there isn't all that much to do, in terms of the social scene. But there's the Baakens valley to go wondering through, there's the old practice room above Fischer's Jewelers in town that my band used to use, there are dunes out at Maitlands. You can park at the edge of Southend and look over the harbour lights at night. There's the Four Winds music club in Central on Sunday nights where any chump can pitch up with his guitar and play a few tunes. You can get some decent Chinese food in Parliament Street and eat it in St. Georges Park (best done at night, safety permitting). Anyway, there's more. But you get the idea. I like the place.

Over, out. I'll try posting a little more regularly in the future. The past while things have been floaty in a slightly unsettling way.

(UPDATE: view's not too shabby by night either: 1, 2.)

The Croats are restless...

clive — Mon, 8 May 2006 07:56:47 +0200

Just picture this: You are a young man of alledged Croatian heritage. You work at a dynamic small company for a few years, then decide to leave in search of new experiences. You find new gainful employment, work hard to fit in, earn the respect of your bosses and co-workers, make friends that you will keep for the rest of your life. Life is challenging, but you get up each new morning with a song in your heart, ready for all that life has to give you...

And then, a few short months later, without even the slightest provocation, your ex-co-workers put up a website in your honour...

All hail the mighty mighty Stassen!

clive fought the law and the law won...

clive — Tue, 16 May 2006 07:34:26 +0200

So much for regular blogging, eh? Anyway. Having just returned from paying a speeding fine at the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) headquarters in town, my little head is filled with thoughts. I'd like to take this oppurtunity to address the ease with which one can make these payments. In fact, just so we know that no ones make things up, you can check out the traffic fines section of the joburg.org.za site.

Now, what first caught my eye was the fairly prominently placed bit under the picture of the stop sign, where we the public are given 2 numbers for making telephonic credit card payments. Imagine my joy. Here, i'd been bracing myself for a good hour and a half of commute. And instead, all i'd have to day is make a quick phonecall. Well, the warning that the lines are busy is not something to be scoffed at. If you're the kind of guy who likes to watch the gentle ballet of glaciers gliding across the Arctic Ocean, boy have i got some numbers for you to call. I phoned almost without pause for 2 hours, alternating between the 2 numbers, getting only engaged tones. At that point, after 2 hours, i finally got a ring tone. The ringing persisted for 2 minutes then cut out. I rephoned, same thing. Rephoned again, and just got engaged signals, as per the previous 2 hours. This was the point at which i decided that i'd take the commute over the embolism that attempting to reach these numbers was going to cause.

Still, during that time, i managed to read a bit on the rest of said webpage. And the reading is fairly interesting. For instance, between January and December of the year 2002 of our Lord, 'the council generated a massive R644 million from traffic fines'. I am filled with joy when i sit back and imagine all the good things that that mountain of cash must have been used for. And imagine i must, since the site gives no clues.

Anyway, back to the ease of payment thing. The Forms of payment section lower down on the webpage goes on to shoot down all the forms of payment that are more convenient than going to the JMPD HQ itself. These include paying at a local police station (something that i would have done, except that you need a summons and mine is already late and i don't want to end up in some Brixton gulag the next time the JMPD gets an urge to do one of its road-side en masse spot checks). Other discouraged forms of payment include orders, postal orders, and bank guaranteed cheques. What particularly caught my attention was this: '...motorists should avoid paying their traffic fines through independent companies that claim to pay your traffic fine for a fee, via Internet or telephonic transactions. "This is done at your own risk. If that company does not pay your fine and a warrant of arrest is issued for you, then you can land up in jail...'. While that all makes perfect sense, it isn't made entirely clear if this warning should also apply to the numbers advertised for telephonic payments higher up on the same webpage. Grumble.

And lastly but not leastly, just like everyone else in Shawshank, i'm innocent, dammit. The Man is pushing me down. No, serial. Over, out.

The dark side weakens...

clive — Fri, 19 May 2006 08:54:22 +0200

This is already a few weeks old by now, and everyone who cares will already know about it, but what the hey: LucasFilm is releasing the original Star Wars trilogy in its original theatrical form. Due to 'overwhelming demand', apparently. Which is to put it mildly of course.

What's interesting about this to me is that it's quite a turn-around on Lucas' part, whom for years has claimed that he would *never* again release the original versions of the movies, saying that he was sorry if people had fallen in love with incomplete movies (i'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it). What i'm getting at is that the 'overwhelming demand' has been there for quite some time and Lucas never budged before.

So, while i'm very glad that he's doing this, i just can't help but wonder why. Others have probably already answered this definitively, but since my 2 second Google on the matter didn't yield much, i'll just waffle on instead. For one thing, i can't imagine that George Lucas is in any way exposed to studio pressure to make this release. I also can't imagine that he needs the money. Star Wars is a huge franchise and i'd imagine that his THX sound system and Industrial Light and Magic are profitable also.

On the other hand, there has been talk of Lucas using some technical miracle to convert all 6 SW movies to 3D, so i suppose he could maybe want to fund something like that. He has also stated his intention to make smaller, more personal non-SW movies after Episode III, so maybe he requires funds and/or studio goodwill for that sort of thing. I don't know, just guessing randomly.

Anyway, the (temporary) re-release is a victory and blessing for 2 particular groups of people. One being the Star Wars zealots who've been bitching for years that Han Shot First and it should stay that way (among other things). The other group would be the general fans of cinema, who've been deprived of the original version of a truly ground breaking, genre defining, pop-culture event in film. For my part, i probably ranked as part of the first group at one point, but since being bludgeoned with the prequel trilogy, i probably identify more with the second.

I'm sorry, i've told you nothing have i? Over, out.

Reviews, sort of...

clive — Mon, 5 Jun 2006 11:50:52 +0200

Now that i've shifted my site updating goals from 'more frequently' to 'less infrequently', let me try padding up the content by doing a few reviews. Before that, just a quick mention that i've quite deliberately tried to avoid anything resembling proper reviewing for a while now. Particularly concerning music. That would be because i consider music reviews to be mostly a waste of time. Sure, i can basically see the point of reviewing the technical aspects of music, since that's fairly tangible, but it only really has relevance to people who play music. But even that sort of thing can be horribly bloodless. Just because a guitar solo may lack technical merit doesn't mean it doesn't make you feel like running around screaming and burning your house to the ground in a moment of pure euphoria. Which is the point of music really, how it makes you feel. And here sittith i, waving my sceptre of pretensciousness. Ha, meh. Here goes...

>> Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium - Not unexpectedly, the Chili Peppers are picking up pretty much where they left off with previous studio album By The Way. The extra space afforded by the double album seems to have given the guys a bit more room to play around with styles, which i'm enjoying very much. Like Frusciante's moans on Split My Mind, to name but one example. Really, even though i liked By The Way just fine, i think the new album's much stronger and i'm enjoying it a lot more. What might urk some, though, is that basically no matter how a song starts or what it's verse is like, its going to burst into a big melodic chorus at some point. More often than not with John Frusciante harmonies to back it up. But this suits me fine, mostly. Somewhere around Californication or at the very latest By The Way, most reasonable fans of the band should have come to terms with the fact that the hell for leather funk lunacy of earlier years is a thing of the past and that you're going to have to accept that you now have the same 4 guys, but committed to a different style of music. Alternatively, you can choose not to accept that, cease buying these 4 fine gentlemen's albums, and exercise the restraint to not bitch to me about how much better you think they used to be. Not that Stadium Arcadium is without its funk of course. The big vocal harmonies can sometimes drown the fun in gravitas, but you've basically got 2 hours of excellent music that'll make you feel good to your rotting core right here.

>> Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam - the new eponymously titled Pearl Jam album, sure to be known as The Avocado Album to the generations that will be engineered by the alien master races from a patch of dried blood salvaged from Keith Richard's scratch plate as they sit and ponder the meaning of the kilometer high bronze statue of Robert Mugabe with a footprint occupying the entire Pretoria... but i digress... I love the new album. Fair enough, i'm such a Pearl Jam whore that i'd probably buy albums of Eddie Vedder gargling Sprite. But this is a good album. Now, if you've followed reviews and PR nonsense and such, you'll have been led to believe that this is Pearl Jam's best album in a good long while and that it's a quantum leap in improvement over the last few (Riot Act, Binaural). As it so happens, the last 10 years of Pearl Jam include some of my favourite music ever. If like me, you've liked what Pearl Jam's been up to all along, this will probably be just another great Pearl Jam album to you. If, however, you've been dissapointed by the last decade or so of efforts by the band, you'll probably prefer the new album. Basically, the songs are more kick ass, Vedders vocals are just that bit more urgent than they've been as of late, there are hell for leather solos applenty and there's a lower percentage of the slower half-folky Niel Young-esque type of thing that the band has been growing fond of.

>> Tool, 10000 Days - There are people in this world who can write Tool reviews, but i'm not one of them. I regard all their albums as being perfect and cannot offer you an objective opinion in the slightest. What i can tell you though is that the new album continues in a natural fashion from where Lateralus left off. The band members had been saying in interviews that touring with Fantomas had filled them with the desire to make the next album heavier, but i'm not really hearing it. Which is fine, Tool have a certain intensity that comes from the combination of instrumental arrangements, vocal lines and actual lyrics that tends to send the music spiralling above it's on-paper levels of heaviness anyway. Also, as always, the band is just technically unbelievable. Particularly Carey's drumming and Keenan's vocals, but everyone really.

On a different note, i had been wondering how Tool might try topping the packaging of Lateralus (you'll recall the booklet with transparent pages with the compound image you could peel away at). I must say the concept of building spectroscopic glasses in the packaging and creating a booklet of 3d photos is staggeringly out there. And it looks amazing.

Hell for leather! Over, out

Dingoes, babies, you know...

clive — Tue, 6 Jun 2006 07:01:38 +0200

I vaguely reviewed the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album Stadium Arcadium in the previous post. What i didn't mention was my horror moment when listening to the first song on the second disc of that album. That would be the 'sh** that sounds really similar to something i wrote' moment of horror. The RHCP song in question is Desecration Smile for what its worth and its the verse bit that has a few similar elements. Of course, this sort of thing is always just waiting to happen. It's tempting for me to imagine Flea enduring the roughly 30 hours of flight between my hometown and his, taking a brisk half hour commute between JHB International and my house, crawling in through a window, rummaging through my notes, finding one with 'E - C' scrawled on it that particularly takes his fancy and then making a break for it. But the truth is that these things happen... particularly when you have songs hanging off fairly simple structures. You probably already know this, but there are really only so many chord progressions, and it's mainly really the arrangements you slap over these progressions that makes things different (and timing and weird chords and one or two other things, but you get what i mean). For example, if the olde memory serves, the chorus of The Police's So Lonely has the same progression as U2's With Or Without You, but you'd be insane to claim the songs are overly similar.

In my case though, the guitar strumming, bassline and (to a lesser extent) vocal line all have a noticeable similarity to something i cooked up. My bassline's more slouchy, but its hovering around the same bunch of notes. Anyway, the similarity's noticeable to me. The song's something i came up with round the end of 2001, but if someone else beats you to the finish line, it's pretty much over. Anyway, maybe i'm just obsessing over the details. That happens. To take another example, i think that the verse of Arno Carsten's Another Universe has some vague similarity to the verse of Scott Weiland's Barbarella off his solo album 12 Bar Blues, but no one else seems particularly concerned by it.

Okay, in closing, the subject matter of this post has led to me referring to myself writing songs. Please, please do not get the impression that i think of myself as some John Lennon-esque character, rotting away in the Sandton suburbs, penning away at undiscovered classics, driven by the call of cheap whiskey. The calibre of song writing i'm referring to is very much the sort of pedestrian slog that any person with enough limbs to hold a guitar and enough digits to press the strings down could accomplish. Right. Over, out.

live forever, learn how to fly...

clive — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 13:04:24 +0200

I was up at around 11ish last Saturday, finishing up a bit of work, and what should be on the television but... Fame. Because i am ridiculously weak and because i have a soft spot for early 80's New York flicks, i sat and watched a few minutes here and there... including the scene that was quite pivotal in the marketing, with the everyone in the street dancing to the theme tune. Having not seen the movie in at least 15 years, i was quite taken aback at just how shamelessly this scene was engineered for maximum inspirational effect.

Just as a reminder: one of the characters has a talent and passion for pop music, but his teachers feel he should be focusing his talents on more worthy orchestral endeavours. But said talented young man does manage to put together production quality recordings of some tunes, one of which happens to be the movie's title track. In a step of defiance, this character's taxi driving father pulls up in front of the New York City High School for the Performing Arts (the movie's setting) at what appears to be an entirely arbitrary time during the day, with 2 speakers resembling large bull horns mounted on cab's roof. He comes to a halt and plays his son's song at high volume and within literally seconds pupils are streaming out of the school doors into the street and dancing to the song. Since this is a school of the performing arts, many pupils are, in fact, dancers and they seem to take this oppurtunity to dance to the tune in their trained styles... including ballet. A few also take it upon themselves to dance on cars that happen to be parked in the street. So you have a few hundred people dancing and running around in circles in the street and something vaguely akin to a riot is brewing. Then we move to the next scene, with no apparent consequences having come from the occurences from the previous scene.

Fair enough, this scene gives viewers goose bumps to this day, so the film makers must have done something right... but come on, this is like a WWF writer's wet dream. I mean, this movie is a drama, and quite a solid one at that. Even though it's often about music, it isn't a musical. This isn't like Chicago where its par for the course that characters burst into elaborate dance routines. And the movie's like all Oscar winning and stuff (an impressive list of awards here).

Anyway, i just found it interesting that a (fairly) respected movie could get away with something like this. And i was wondering if there are movies today that are doing similar things. There's that scene in Magnolia where different characters in different settings are singing along to the same song, but that doesn't really seem the same. Or maybe i'm just a sucker for that kind of thing. All the same, i'm spent. Over, out.

a very belated cheers to Glenn Quinn...

clive — Tue, 4 Jul 2006 10:28:47 +0200

(while not the true impetus for this post, Angel season 1 spoilers happen to follow below...)

I've been watching (and very much enjoying) the first season of Angel on DVD lately. If you're familiar with the show, you'll know that the character of Doyle dies a fairly unexpected heroic death midway through the first season. And if you didn't i just spoiled it for you... sorry. The move seemed bizarre to me when i watched the show on mnet open time a lifetime ago, and still seemed bizarre now, him being a very likeable character and all. So i thought i'd ping the geek's oracle of choice, Wikipedia, for possible answers. As expected, there are some vague mutterings concerning the subject. But what really knocked the wind out of me was discovering that Glenn Quinn, the actor whom had portrayed Doyle, died 4 years ago at the age of 32. It's not like i'm completely coming apart at the seems or anything, but i definitely feel like i'm more sad than i have any real right to be. Sure, it's not like Dimebag Darryl's death. That news just made me feel like going home, closing the curtains and drinking myself into a coma. I couldn't bring myself to listen to any Pantera for months after that. But musicians (i feel anyway) have a far greater ability to get into your head and affect your life with their music. This along with John Ritter is the only time i've really felt bad about an actor's passing. Hell, thinking about a world without John Ritter still makes me feel terrible for reasons i can only vaguely point at. Anyway, enough moping about for me, i have work to do dammit. Cheers Glenn Quinn.

clives declines to fight for his right to party...

clive — Wed, 5 Jul 2006 07:59:15 +0200

I had the oppurtunity to be in a fight this morning. In fact, since the guy actually pushed me in the face hard enough to make my lip swell, i suppose i technically was in one. He also threatened to break my glasses and, erm, "kill" me. Do not fear though: there was a certain gentleness in his eyes that made it clear that he simply wanted to hurt me very very badly and not actually kill me. But here i am in life trying to be passive, so i walked away not having lifted a finger. Well, you might be wondering whether i was actually consciously taking a passive stance, or if i just didn't feel like getting the crap beaten out of my quite so bright and early (or if i was starting to sense the possibility of being jailed for acting like a caveman in public). Who knows, huh. Its usually hard to even convince yourself that you pro-actively did nothing, isn't it. He was a short but exceptionally aggressive dark haired guy in a metallic grey Audi, probably late 20's to early 30's, and he certainly would have hurt me in a bad bad way, even if i was able to pull some miracle and "win", whatever the hell winning actually means. Just like being in school all over again huh? Have i mentioned yet how much i hate people? Oh, i thought i had.

(in case you're wondering, the guy was upset that i hooted at him because he was needlessly blocking an entrance to the office park where i work and i was stranded in the middle of the street with oncoming traffic coming at me. i generally detest hooting, but i was trying to add a little motivation in this case.)

The return of the king...

clive — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:05:36 +0200

At last, this mockery of an omnipresent, omnipotent Chuck Norris can come to a f***ing end as the mighty mighty David Hasselhoff retakes his rightful thrown. I was a fan off Hasselhoff's uber-skank years before it became an online phenomenon and have believed strongly all this time that the man can out-cheese Norris any day of the week. And, judging by the content of his video for his song Jump in my car, Hasselhoff's belief in the strength of his cheese is still strong.

Here, courtesy of Splattermail, is the proof.

Embetter this...

clive — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:58:39 +0200

More extended periods of zero updates on the site, then. So here's a little something uttered from the lips of George W Bush, pilferred by me from the fantastic DubyaSpeak site.

REPORTER: Is the tide turning in Iraq?
DUBYA: I think -- tide turning -- see, as I remember -- I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of -- it's easy to see a tide turn -- did I say those words?

When i read stuff like this, i actually honestly start to wish i liked the guy. Here you have the leader of unquestionably the most powerful nation in the world, one of the most powerful people alive and here he's rambling on in a White House press conference like he's just downed Philip K Dick's liquidised spleen, drifting in and out of some sort of dreamstate.

And take a minute to feel for the Bush administration's PR wing. Here someone in the press is asking about the tide turning in Iraq. No problemo, as far as the Bush Administration is concerned, of course it is. It's turning like it would if Charlton Heston was threatening it with a bible and a shotgun. Just say it Dubya, tell that bastard that everything's peachy. And here the leader of the free world goes drifting across some unimaginable plane of lateral thought into 'I was raised in the desert'.

I bet those guys spend some nights sleeping with guns in their mouths.

That thought makes me happiest of all.

I want to be a rocket pirate...

clive — Thu, 3 Aug 2006 08:32:33 +0200

I want to be a rocket pirate. [Will update on this later. Depending on the shape of your mindscape, the subject of this post may sound more sensual than its really meant to. It's not sensual at all. It's comics, the anti-sensual.]

Moving right along, a while back i mentioned my surprise at discovering that Springbok Nude Girls had reformed and intended to record new music. At that stage, it was the original guys, minus trumpeter Adriaan Brand, with Brendan Jury and Lee Thomson generally filling the void. I'd heard nothing since then and found the lack of Brand a bit off-putting, so i'd kind of written off the idea of hearing new SNG music anytime soon. Imagine my surprise when i hit their site a few minutes ago, on a whim, only to discover that Brand has rejoined the band and Jury and Lee are no more. Of course, the SNG site can't be bothered to date updates, so who knows how old this news actually is by now. Note, i have absolutely nothing against Lee and Jury, but i do definitely find the idea of the original line-up a bit more exciting.

Having said that, i hope this isn't the reason that the new Kobus! album is so excrutiatingly late. Swaar Metaal was to have been released in May, but up 'til now their site still simply proclaims that it is Oppad. The cover looks hella cool though.

Over, out

[UPDATE: Kobus! have updated their site, indicating that Swaar Metaal will be released 2006/09/29. Which is a relief since i saw Arno Carstens and Theo Crous on TV a while ago talking about how busy they were on new SNG stuff.] [UPDATE II: that release date no longer appears on the site, which i suspect may be subtly meaningful, but i'm not sure exactly how]

Streaming stuff...

clive — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:40:14 +0200

Once again, i have nothing better to post about than music. Two of my favourite bands happen to have some new stuff streaming off their sites right now, right at this very moment. So if you hit their sites a month after today it might not really be there anymore. Life is a cold dirty whore that way.

Firstly, if you hit Audioslave's site you'll be greeted by their new single Original Fire. It's a kind of Motown fueled number and while that wouldn't typically be my kind of thing, i find myself liking the song a lot. Nice taster for the new album Revelations.

Secondly, Iron Maiden are currently hosting streaming audio for Brighter Than A Thousand Sons and Different World as well as a streaming video for The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg on their site. All these will appear on their new album A Matter Of Life And Death. Maiden have been gushing enthusiasm for the new material for the last few months now and touting the intensity thereof, and based on what i've heard, i'd have to say they have more than enough reason to gush enthuse and tout. The Benjamin Breeg track in particular is blowing my mind.

That's it. If you're tired of these kinds of inconsequential posts, you're tired of life. Over, out.

[UPDATE: yet more goodness, go here for a behind the scenes video on the making of Maiden's A Matter Of Life And Death. In the ballpark of 15 minutes.] [UPDATE II: also behind the scenes, but less so, but still cool: audioslave podcasts]

Snakes In A Granada...

clive — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:27:07 +0200

Many, many sites right now are discussing the box office underperformance of Snakes On A Plane. Aside from all the other places, sites that i regularly read include: The Beat, If Destroyed, Still True, The Engine and CHUD. Now, i don't and have never cared about Snakes On A Plane the movie, or Snakes On A Plane the internet wunderkind. I just found it interesting that the CHUD article seemed to be the only one that clearly pointed out a very significant point, and i quoteth:

'Here"s the big secret: nobody who was in on the early buzz was looking forward to this movie. The discussion and the jokes weren"t about the movie but about the absurdity of the whole thing. No one who was in on the joke early on felt that they needed to see a movie called Snakes on a Plane. They just couldn"t believe how hilarious it was that someone was making a movie called Snakes on a Plane.'

I agree with the fine Mr Devin Faraci of CHUD wholeheartedly. Now, a far, far more interesting underperformance is Superman Returns, but i don't really know that i have the strength of character to wade through that discussion. Oor en Uit.

KOBUS! Watch: Doodstraf...

clive — Tue, 7 Nov 2006 22:30:46 +0200

Arg, finally, i can start moving that Snakes post off the front page...

Okay, a recap for those who started watching mid-season. Originally, KOBUS! would have released their 3rd album Swaar Metaal sometime in May this year. That date came and went. Months passed, seasons changed, deputy presidents were shuffled. Until their website announced a 29 September release date. Which also happens to be my birthday. The planets had aligned, i was pleased. A few days later that release date was removed from their website. I nudged one year closer to death, but Swaar Metaal remained tucked away in Francois Breytenbach Blom's cubby hole. Some more months went by, then you sat down at your computer and somehow happened upon my site. So, presumably, the album has been done for ages, but hasn't been released yet because Theo Crous wouldn't be available to tour due to his commitments to the newly re-reunited Springbok Nude Girls. Failing to support new albums with live shows tends to be a good way of making them not sell, so that makes decent sense.

But, finally, something has drifted to the surface. In the form of the album's first single Doodstraf. It's available for download and purchase at the Rhythm Records site. In case you were wondering, the preview download is fairly terrible. Poor sound quality and a mighty mighty 24 seconds in length, it presents the listener with a killer intro but only the first line of the actual song. A note to Rhythm Records: if you're hoping to entice people into buying the song (who weren't already planning to do so anyway) this isn't a great way of doing it. As it turns out, i'm one of those who'd have been prepared to buy it sight unseen, for a mere R6.00 (0.82 USD!) it turns out, but i don't have a PayPal account. Actually, i've never needed a PayPal account before. I took a quick look at what registration entails, but i'm feeling a bit lazy right now. My loss, i'm sure.

Having said that, the song itself sounds good. Actually, i'm tempted to say it sounds very very good, but there's not really enough of it on display for me to be that enthusiastic yet. As promised, the new material seems to be at the heavier end of the band's existing range. Based on the single available line of lyrics, i'm definitely interested to hear where that's going to go.

I'll probably be grumbling on about Mr Crous's other band in the less distant than usual future. Over, out.

[UPDATE: the second, possibly even awesomer, single Tienerangs - thanks Eric]
[UPDATE: while i was busy moving countries, we got a comment from the band! fkn main yes.]

Into the void: Superman, DRM...

clive — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 07:24:36 +0200

Bryan Singer seems to be getting his chance at a sequel to Superman Returns and has pledged to make the movie you wanted to see first time around. All the same, that's old news by now, but there's been a lot of discussion about studio claims concerning the movie making a profit. If you've done a little reading on the cost of the movie and a little reading on the movie's relative underperformance at the box office, you'll probably be thinking that profitability is unlikely at this stage. This link suggests how accounting coupled with verve can make numbers look the way studios want them to look.

On the subject of Superman Returns, i enjoyed the movie very much at the cinema. It was substantially flawed and the supposed love story was an absolute wreck, but the visuals were beautiful, the flight effects were perfect and everytime Superman lifted something really really heavy with that theme tune pumping through the cinema i got goose bumps. But, for whatever reason, i find myself thinking less and less fondly of the thing as the months go by. It seems that some of the flaws gain weight with time whilst feasting on one's goodwill for the film's positive aspects. A shame, really. I like liking movies.

Lastly and leastly: DRM. This lengthy and profanity laden interview at The Register with Peter Jenner discusses how DRM is dying and the problems that major labels may very well be facing in years to come as online distribution models fundamentally change the music industry. Interesting reading. Some might comment on how the big 4 major labels have manipulated the music industry and how they deserve all the problems that come their way. But i'm a simple country lad, so i'll leave that sort of thing to braver and more knowledgable souls. However, if DRM is to die i will be attending it's funeral with a large popcorn and a 750ml cup of Cola beverage. Not because i am a villianous music pirate, but specifically because i am not. All DRM does is to make it unnecessarily difficult for people who buy music to do things with said music that they are and always have been very much legally entitled to do. I'm sure we've all figured out by now that no flavour of DRM will ever prevent the determined pirate from ripping anything. It irritates me to no end to buy a CD that isn't a real CD and can't be guaranteed to play on all CD players, may have slightly inferior sound quality and will most likely not play on PC CD-ROMS. I have a particular CD that proudly states on it's packaging that it won't play on Macs or work with iPods. That squishy gnawing sound in the background would be the biting of the hand that feeds, i believe. Die DRM die.

But i am full of joy: over, out.

Going off the rails on a Christopher Walken...

clive — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 18:09:03 +0200

I see that there'll be a Motley Crue bio-pic, apparently mostly devoted to their decadence and debauchery during the 80's and 90's. I'm not convinced that this story is actually worthy of more than a VH1 Behind The Music special (which they've already done), but we shall see. Or, more likely, other people will see and i shall hear what they have to say about it. (it is my honest belief that Motley Crue is the most overrated act in 'heavy' music ever)

The real point of interest for me is that Christopher Walken will be making a cameo appearance as Ozzy Osbourne. As a little background, during their early days, Crue were opening acts on an Ozzy tour and both parties fed off each others' fairly uncivilised behavior during this time. What really interests me is what sort of Luciferian dark magic the movie makers will be employing to transform Walken into Osbourne. Never mind any difference in looks. A wig and an accent will clear that right up. Now, take a moment to consider the ages at play here. Walken is about 5 years older than Osbourne. He is currently 63 years old, and this cinematic rag will most likely be tossed together next year. The Osbourne/Crue tour happened in 1984. At that time, Ozzy was 36.

This might just be me, but the idea of a 64 year old Christopher Walken playing a 36 year old Ozzy Osbourne kind of blows my mind.

I expect that the goal will be to make Walken look like a younger version of what Osbourne currently looks like. This might sound obvious, but Ozzy has only really had his current look since the early-to-mid 90's. During the 80's he went through a series of awful awful looks. I can't imagine that Walken would be recognisable as the man if he was to adopt his actual image of that time. Here's a picture of him with Motley Crue at the time of that tour. Shocking in all the wrong ways, i'm sure you'll agree. Then you'll be pleased to discover that i have another image from the same time that's actually infinitely worse.

As a matter of interest, here's what the apparently immortal Christopher Walken looked like earlier this year.

The human race is over...

clive — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 09:36:10 +0200

From the Register: 'The defence lawyer of a Wisconsin man charged with having sex with a dead deer is claiming he's innocent of any wrongdoing - because a "crimes against sexual morality" statute prohibits sex with animals, but fails to mention carcasses...'

I believe this is the point where our alien overlords decide that this round has been a waste and rather elect to reboot the system and restart the game.

Whatever this guy's sentence ends up being (because please Jesus don't tell me this defense is going to succeed) i hope it is followed up with the public cuisinarting of the lawyer.

(rest of Register article here)

[UPDATE: humanity not quite doomed yet, as reported by The Register: Sex with dead deer is illegal, US man finds]

World pauses in anticipation as clive approaches keyboard...

clive — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:23:27 +0200

I somehow forgot to blog for about 3 months. Or, to be more precise, the day job has been grinding me under its boot heel and i kind of got out of the habit. And i was never that much in the habit to begin with. Anyway, when you leave your website utterly untouched for a quarter of a year and civilisation continues to function smoothly, you can be fairly certain you're not making a whole lot of a difference. No polite yet earnest letters with uncannily fine penmanship from Prince Charles that smell of tea, strawberries and corgie hounds on a crisp Britannic afternoon. No barely intelligible voice messages left by President Bush ranting about being raised by coyotes and super-intelligent termites on the Mexican border. No freak occurences of Aurora Borealis-like phenomena over Benoni. Fair enough, some guy in Edenvale claimed to be exhibiting the stigmata, but it seems more likely that he unknowingly stabbed himself in the head with a Bic pen after he forgot to add the Coke component to ten consecutive glasses of brandy and coke. Which is all fine, really.

But, ja. I'll be trying to summon the willpower to update here a little more regularly.

(Actually, the site hasn't been utterly untouched. Eric has been contributing Kobus! info in the comments over here.)

KOBUS! at Zeplins...

clive — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:32:18 +0200

So, going into the KOBUS!'s Zeplins gig, i carried the vague knowledge that Swaar Metaal is a heavy album and that KOBUS! is now performing full band all the time. All i'd heard of the new stuff was a few seconds worth of clips of Doodstraf and Tienerangs off the Rhythym Records site (because i shun radio and wasn't quite up to creating a paypal account specifically so that i could spend 12 rand). Promising as those few seconds were, the notion of alright-KOBUS!-is-heavy-now was a little hard to process, just because there are already a bunch of tracks on their previous album 100% Skuldgevoelvry that are plenty heavy. Having rambled on and on though, the notion of what separates the new heavy from the old heavy became very very clear seeing the live show and hearing the new CD. More on that after this short break...

The opening band at the Zeplins show was the afrikaans industrial/ebm act NuL. I'd never heard of them before (possibly because i shun radio, but who knows), but i enjoyed their show very much. You can download a ton of tracks from their website, although the live versions of the songs as played at the Zeplins show had more prominent guitars and slightly more aggressive vocals.

The KOBUS! set started off with Theo Crous grinding out a few bars of Die Vlam, which then exploded into Doodstraf. As amazing as Doodstraf sounds on the CD, it really kicks and breathes when played live. I think this might stem from Crous playing the riff slightly loser live, but i was really hearing the song for the first time that night, so my thoughts on those types of things could be off the mark. I'm not going to go into a song-by-song rundown of the whole show, partially because i don't remember the show song-by-song, but also because that would be redundant: the truth of the matter is that KOBUS! is a really good band with really good songs and they are able to play them really well live.

On to more general commentary, then. Francios Breytenbach Blom and Theo Crous are really great performers and their enthusiasm for the material is unquestionable. I often wonder how bands can expect crowds to have a good time at their shows when they're clearly engaged in a joyless slog, but Blom and Crous look to be having about as good a time as a band can have. (this was especially good to see since the lateness of Swaar Metaal and the reunion of certain legendary SA bands had led me to wonder about Crous and Blom's continuing commitment to KOBUS!)

With KOBUS! having become a metal band proper, they do end up abandoning a fair deal of their old material, or alternatively, re-arranging the old material to better suit the new sound. (For the time being anyway, I'm not sure if they're going to be be doing more sedate shows after this initial launch tour) They played 2 songs representing the first album, both souped up quite a bit form the recorded versions: Gee Raat and (as one would expect) Hoenderman. From 100%: Kultuurveestent, Volk Van Main, Storie van die Duiweltjie & die Engeltjie and Heldersiende Bedelaar. (Bedelaar in particular sounded fantastic, which is saying something considering a lesser frontman may have been distracted by the task of parading around the stage with a blow up doll, violating said doll in new and inventive ways with the each new verse.) The rest of the show was made up of the bulk of Swaar Metaal.

Some will feel that losing that much of the old material and old sound effectively loses those very things that made KOBUS! special to begin with. One of the things that made the band distinctive in the past was their ability and willingness to juggle an array of sounds, styles and lyrical subject matter. While Swaar Metaal presents of variety of sub-categories of heavy music, the overall sound is quite consistent. Also, lyrically Blom has avoided comedic lyrics and in a few cases (Doodstraf, Witman, NJSA) songs deal directly with current socio-political concerns. There is a particular sense of real anger in these songs that serves to give them greater intensity than some of the earlier heavy works from the band (i'm thinking along the lines of Duiweltjie & die Engeltjie here).

What effects these changes will have on the KOBUS! fanbase would definitely be interesting to see. For the tannies who enjoyed hearing lekkerluister treffers like Sondagmiddag on Afrikaans Stereo, the KOBUS! love affair is probably over. Or who knows, maybe they'll krank Swaar Metaal the f*ck up and go running around half naked in the agterplaas between the old Cortina parts and empty klipdrift bottles as the soothing sounds carry them away. For those who followed Blom and Crous over form VOD and SNG, there probably isn't that much opposition to the new sound.

But i'm going off a-wandering here. As i've implied above, i think Swaar Metaal is really good. I've thrown around the term 'heavy' a LOT, which is sort of ironic because i actually loath the term and feel the differences in peoples' perceptions makes it virtually meaningless. Some people might think Def Leppards's real headbanging stuff while others might feel that Metallica barely registers as heavy. But occasionally i hear a metal album and just think, man, no matter what you're into you've got to acknowledge that that's a nice heavy album, whether your usual thing be Dimmu Borgir or Seputura or Korn or whatever. Last time i felt that was with the new Slayer album and Swaar Metaal honest to god gives me that same feeling.

But back to the Zeplins gig. Like i said, great show. The only detracting factor really was that the sound was horrible and muddy, to the extent that i often found it difficult to decipher the words in Blom's between song banter. But never mind the muddiness, the sound was louder than f*ck, and for this sort of show volume is arguably preferable to clarity. And that's that.

[you can get Swaar Metaal online here; the previous much-commented KOBUS! thread is here; UPDATE: my apologies for not making specific mention of Paul Blom and Pierre Tredoux - these guys are both very good and really give (the other) Blom and Crous the anchor they need to go wild]

Nothin' lasts forever, even cold november rain...

clive — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:31:20 +0200

I got the call at around 11 this morning. It was my girlfriend letting me know that 5FM had just announced that Guns 'n Roses have pulled out of the MyCoke Fest. So, ja. If you've followed GNR's career in even the laziest level of detail since the 90's or so you probably did not void your bladder in shock when you heard this news. And nor did i. No shock really, no disapointment. Just the relief that i am now finally able to get back that 1000 plus suid afrikaanse rand that Computicket has been keeping on on my behalf for the past few months.

Not that i'm a total cynic. I love Guns 'n Roses and i really wanted very badly for these SA shows to happen so that i could see at least some incarnation of this band. But really, as major acts go GNR are probably the most notorious show cancelers there have ever been. At least the suspense is over now and we don't actually have to worry about showing up on the day and having the band cancel from backstage because Axl Roses's 300 year old wine is half a degree too warm.

Still, its been a wild ride, all starting with the buying of 2 tickets. And there have been times when i was fairly optimistic. A few months ago, when Chinese Democracy was still said to be on schedule for a March 6 release, i felt fairly certain that the show would happen if the album came out on time or at least sometime before the tour was meant to start. And the SA shows were happening about a month and a half after that planned release date, so that gave a bit of buffer time as well.

My optimism even increased a little when Japanese tour dates were announced that would precede the SA shows and form the beginning of the world tour. This suggested that the album was on schedule and also gave just that bit more buffer before the SA shows - i felt fairly confident that if those Japan dates happened, the SA dates would also.

But things unraveled late in the game, as they do. Late February brought the announcement that Chinese Democracy's recording was completed, but that the mixing phase still lay ahead and the 6 March release wasn't going to happen.

Now, this announcement shouldn't really have come as any surprise to anyone following the 'progress' on Chinese Democracy. See, record companies need to receive a completed album somewhere around 8 weeks before it's release date. This is of course the time that allows the record company the opportunity to slap together a few hundred thousand copies of the album plus packaging. News has a way of getting out when bands deliver highly anticipated $13m 10-years-in-the-making albums to their record company.

Besides the likelihood of that sort of news slipping out, Chinese Democracy is a major release and record companies have this tendency to want to punt their product a little before it magically appears on those musica shelves. I would imagine they'd be wanting to do at least a month's worth of promotion before releasing such an anticipated album. Also, it's customary for a lead single to precede an album's release by at least a few weeks.

So when none of these sorts of things seem to have happened within days of an album's supposed release date, you can be fairly sure it's not going to be happening. And, like i said before, this was eventually confirmed by an official announcement that the release date was indefinitely delayed, but would be coming out 'soon'. (a little off topic, but keep in mind that all those things i was carrying on about in the above 2 paragraphs still haven't happened, so Chinese Democracy is still probably at very least 2 months away. Some or other rumour stated a September release. Who knows)

But hey, never mind the album, GNR have toured sans album before after all. That still gave us those Japan dates to count on. Our precious buffer. Despite the ominous lack of album, those Japan dates were remaining stubbornly confirmed right up to the 11th hour. Against my better judgement, i was starting to believe the gig would actually happen after all. But finally that cancellation came. Not because of the delay in the album's release, but because of a hand injury sustained by bassist Tommy Stinson. This announcement came with confident claims that the SA shows would go ahead as scheduled. But lets be honest, we all knew we were well into the danger zone at this point. And today we were finally put out of our misery.

So, is Tommy Stinson's hand really injured beyond playability? And if so, was it really not possible to get a fill-in to sub for a few gigs. I mean, during GNR's glory years, fans would have found a gig without Slash unacceptable, but i doubt fans would be too concerned about Stinson at this point (he has been in GNR for close on 10 years though, so Axl probably feels a whole lot more attached to him than fans might at this stage). I'm sure many will be asking these questions, but i couldn't really even be bothered. If Tommy Stinson says his hand's stuffed, i'll believe that. But, the shows off like i always thought it would be and now i have an extra half day's worth of me time.

Over, out.

because it's been a while and because this is cool...

clive — Tue, 4 Sep 2007 01:34:52 +0200

Because it's been a while and because this is cool... K.O.B.U.S! SwaarMetaal video

clive does kuala lumpur #1: the mopeds...

clive — Tue, 4 Sep 2007 14:40:14 +0200

My partner Lize and i are currently in New Zealand, but before that we spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur. I will attempt to post a few photos of that. I won't be exhaustively documenting anything, nor should you expect particularly impressive photos. Actually, you should probably just go do something more worthwhile right now. Arg. Anyway, these were taken somewhere between 7 and 8 in the morning, heading into Kuala Lumpur proper.

PHOTO 1: My first naive thought at this sight went something along the lines of "My heavens, look at all these people on mopeds who happen to be concentrated on this piece of road right near me by a sheer million to one coincedence, let me take a photo since i shall certainly never behold such a thing again". If you didn't detect the tone, i was an ass. Everyone uses mopeds everywhere in Kuala Lumpur.

PHOTO 2,3: Despite coming from a country where disrespecting the rules of the road is nigh on a national past time, we were amused to see waves of mopeds swarming past us through a tunnel that prominently displayed No Mopeds signs at what must have been something like 2 meter intervals. The Malaysian people have a charmingly casual and relaxed way of breaking the rules of the road though. They also seemed to be endowed with an uncommonly relaxed version of the survival instinct, something that allows them to casually swerve out of near-certain gruesome savage carnage filled collisions at the last possible moment with barely so much as a shrug.

clive does kuala lumpur #2: the towers...

clive — Wed, 5 Sep 2007 13:08:31 +0200

Okay, today we take a look a Kuala Lumpur's chief camera magnet, the Petronas Towers. It's a very sad thing that most of the world got to know these towers through the cinematic gonad-footstomping that is Entrapment, because they are really breathtaking. They're tall enough so you just keep seeing them no matter where you are in the city and with their steel and glass structure they look remarkably different as the light changes through the day.

PHOTO 1: Our first sighting of the towers, driving into the city (taken artlessly through the window of a speeding vehicle, as is my habit). PHOTO 2: As seen from our hotel room window, heading into dusk.

PHOTO 3: The towers by night, the amazing light design turns them into a whole different creature. One thing that no photo can really do justice to is just how damn big they are. They're just this big huge serene thing and they really do exude a weird calming energy. God knows i sound like i'm spouting hippie flavoured offal, but it's true. We'd go sit by them for an hour or so each night, eat ice cream and just feel great.

PHOTO 4: My cherrie and her ouk. One thing you'll notice, particularly at night, is a whole lot of tourists trying to wrestle their cameras into getting a shot of people posing in front of the towers. If you have a wide angle lens you'll be fine, but the proletariat have a fair bit of tripod gymnastics awaiting them. This photo is the product of what i would risk calling herculean effort, with us standing about 200 meters in front of the towers, with the camera tilted as far back as it could go at the bottom of a short flight of stairs directly in front of us on a woefully inadequate 10cm high mini tripod.

PHOTO 5: As seen from the KL tower, which is a tall structure in its own right, standing up high on a hill, hence the helicopteresque view.

clive does kuala lumpur #3: the breakfast of champions...

clive — Thu, 6 Sep 2007 06:18:34 +0200

Rather than just scouring Kuala Lumpur for thrifty electronics purchases, we thought we'd try getting a bit of the city under our feet. One of our attempts to do so was to make our way to a part of the city sometimes referred to as Little India. PHOTO 1: On our way there. I like trees in cities. PHOTO 2,3: The streets around little India. If you were looking for grit, you came to the right place. A lot of lower income high density housing and a very different feeling from the central business area where the Petronas Towers are. Which is quite a harsh adjustment considering the towers are about a 10 minute walk away from where these photos are taken. Or at least, they'd be a ten minute walk for a better man than i. For a man like i we'd be looking more at a grueling 15 minutes.

PHOTO 4,5,6: After eating at some restaurants that were aimed more at the middle class and higher Malaysian, we thought we'd try something a little more, and i hate to use the term, "real". And this street side market packed with people and vendors in Little India seemed a good place for us to grasp at the "real". Which was a great idea and i'd recommend it to anybody, but beware ye delicate western palate! A lot of the food you have to choose from is resting deep in some fairly thick and delicious sauces and if you're not too careful you may just find yourself rustling up a hearty helping of pigs' ears (those would be the fellows behind the rice on the far end of the plate). I noticed the interesting food choice i had made after detecting a certain texture of meat with which i had not previously been acquainted.

clive does kuala lumpur #4: the caves...

clive — Fri, 7 Sep 2007 01:26:23 +0200

When we were planning to go to Kuala Lumpur, we were advised to visit the Batu Caves. To be honest, it sometimes takes a little convincing to get me excited about tourist attractions, but not in this case. That is because, from the moment we are born, all men think caves are cool.

PHOTO 1: I had been under the impression that we'd be heading to the caves through some real old school villages, but this was not to be. Apparently that would still have been the case until about 10 years ago. The first sighting you'll make is not of the caves themselves but of a large gold statue. And with good reason, it's just under 43 meters tall. And it's gold. PHOTO 2, 3: A better look at the statue of Lord Murugan. In my mind, huge statues are the kind of thing that used to get built in the days of yore, but this one was built between 2003 and 2006. It's a concrete structure, but is painted with actual gold. PHOTO 4,5: Those stairs lead into the actual cave and they look a lot because they are a lot - 272 in all. There's a sign at the top instructing visitors that the stairs are not to be used for exercise purposes - i'm not sure if this has ever been a genuine problem.

PHOTO 6: There are tons of monkeys all over the place and they will take anything that you don't keep a strong grip on. PHOTO 7: A view of the surrounding area from up the stairs. Ten years or so ago, this would have been a whole different world. PHOTO 8: The entrance to the cave - this is probably a good point to note just what sort of caves these are. There are a number of caves of varying sorts in these lime stone hills, and to quote wikipedia: 'the largest and best known is the Temple or Cathedral Cave, so named because it houses several Hindu shrines beneath its 100 m vaulted ceiling.'

PHOTO 9-14: The interior of the cave. The cave itself is huge, very impressive and quite beautiful. Inside you'll find a mixture of shrines and commerce - the display of wide screen TV sets caught me a little off guard. There's also another small flight of stairs inside the cave and while it pales in comparison to those outside, it does drive the nail into the coffin.

clive does kuala lumpur #5: the cleaners...

clive — Fri, 7 Sep 2007 11:11:52 +0200

Now here's a special way to earn a living - i present to you the Petronas Twin Towers window washers. The towers are 452 meters high all the way up to the top of the spires, and 375 meters to the top floor - those guys are dangling by a whole lot of cable.

The power of the sun...

clive — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:56:08 +0200

The South African Solar Challenge is a 4175km race for solar powered cars around South Africa taking place from 22 Sep 2008 to 8 Oct 2008. Like all self respecting international events, this race will require its participants to spend a half hour in.... ERMELO!

But in all seriousness, anything that can present opportunities to relieve the general and increasing world wide dependency on oil is good and noble work.